Fables of the Flying City, Episode 11 “Fall To The Edge”

Scene: The top of the Provost’s Tower, the neighborhoods of the Throws, Brickstone & Crumbleden,  Pursestring Row, and a brief fly-over of Terminus Market

Characters involved: Ashe, Sargent Slanger, Cerranah, and all of the rest of the pilots and observers in training.

References:   Ashe’s glider is based on Leonardo DaVinci’s design.

Notes: A lot of world-building in this episode, as Ashe sails from the center to the city to the edge. Posh neighborhoods like the The Throws surround the Provost’s Tower, which bleed into middle-class-ish merchant homes, which then gives way to shabby, rundown places like Crumbleden. We don’t spend a lot of time with the middle-people in this story–the action ping pongs from Ashe in the air and on the docks, and the politics of the Provost’s Tower–but it’s nice to show that it’s there, that there are more people who live and work in Amperstam.

Because I cannot stop thinking about things, I’ve given a great deal of thought about how, say, the families of Brickstone live their lives. Perhaps one day I’ll write a story about such a family, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn-style, set in the sky of a fantasy world, where everyone scrimps and saves in order to get by in the greatest city they know. I touch on it, a bit, in a later episode. But it would be cool to one day dive in. As it stands, it’s enough that there ARE people like that in the city, and that Ashe has been in the bottom for so long, such a life looks like a step up.

At the end of this episode, everything changes. I’m sure more than a few listeners saw this coming–”Bitter Brew” all but announced it–but it gives me a lot of satisfaction just the same.