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Taking a deep breath, she placed her hands on the controls and tried to familiarize herself with them.
There didn’t seem to be enough, maybe that was due to the age of the gadabout. But she could identify the accelerator, decelerator, and the two ailerons.
The next thing she knew, the little gadabout was rumbling down one of the parking lot runways, its engines screaming with the effort.
Against her better judgement, she closed her eyes as it lifted off.
There was a stomach-dropping moment of sudden weightlessness. Then they were in the air, and the engine’s noise dropped to a dull roar.
Sighing with relief, she opened her eyes and looked around.
The city was flying past below and she could see the mountains hurtling toward her in the near distance.
Clouds scudded across the mountaintops, leaving wisps behind them, as if a ballerina had been shedding tulle.
Ulfgard was known for its many micro-climates. The two suns visible in its daytime sky meant the parts of the planet had wildly different weather in different areas.
There were famous beaches and rivers full of mangroves. A whole coastline was home to a species of birds found nowhere else in the universe. Thick, roaming clouds and frequent rains were Ulfgard’s only constant.
Here, close to the capital city, miles of lush forest covered the mountains.
Of course, Emilia had read up on it during the flight. But it was nothing compared to actually seeing all that green from less than a thousand meters up. So many trees were crowded together, craving the light, that the branches reaching for the sky in any tiny area could all be different.
Terra-17 had more plant-life than most of its early Terra counterparts. Pride in a curated plot of greenery was typical for Seventeeners, and Emilia and her grandfather were prouder than most. With his patient help, she had even coaxed vegetables out of the sandy soil of her home.
But this was an unthinkable wealth of vegetation. The very air would be richer for it.
The gadabout grumbled and began to drop, snapping her out of her thoughts and back to the present.
“Your destination is two minutes away,” the robotic voice said.
She tightened her hands on the manual controls and set her jaw in determination.
She had made it this far. She wasn’t about to let this crummy gadabout kill her two minutes from her destination.
Glancing at the time feed on the control panel, she hissed in a frustrated breath.
The fourteenth tenet of 132 Tenets of Childcare & Maintenance stressed the importance of punctuality. It was important to be on time.
And Emilia was already late. So much for making a good first impression.
Of course, it wasn’t her fault. But the sixty-first tenet was already echoing in her head.
Take responsibility. Never make excuses.
The gadabout lowered to a hover height about one meter off the ground.
She looked around. The street just seemed to end. But there was an ornate metal gate on stone pillars at the edge of the trees.
She hopped out of the gadabout and pressed her thumb to the sensor on the gate, hoping for the best.
“Emilia Robbins, pre-approved guest,” the PersonalTouch auto-voice said in a formal tone. “Please enter.”
Sucking in a breath of relief, Emilia went back to the gadabout, climbed in, and manually steered up to the gate. It lifted, and she pulled the gadabout in just before it lowered again.
Immediately on the other side, the trees closed in over the road, branches twining together overhead to form a natural tunnel. Only the globe lights floating among the leaves lit the way.
Emilia felt like she had left the real world and entered the faerie realm.
