"Bigger ships do have challenges, yes, especially in storms. The largest can hold as many as two thousand people, so you can get pretty big."

"That's a town not a ship."

"They are pretty ridiculous, huh."

"You've heard of lots of cool things."

"I've been at this for a while. You'll see some cool things, too."

Nodding, she watches Sarati prepare the ship to leave.

There isn't much left. She needs to go through and check that everything's secured properly - she explains to Grenadine what to do in case of a storm - and then, warning Grenadine not to distract her, leans against the wall opposite the viewport, plants her hands flat on it and closes her eyes, then hooks into the ship's magic and starts to direct it. (She usually does this from the engine room, but here works just as well.)

Gren can't really feel magic in much detail yet. But something magic is happening, for sure.

With a shudder, the ship starts to move. The view out the port slowly changes, the docks and the island sliding away as they move into the mist, the ship occasionally rocking when they hit a particularly rough patch, until it surrounds them utterly. Then, the ship pitches forward then back, then sways side-to-side, and settles with a groan. The mist recedes, and they're in the ley. The iridescent fog is denser but lower, sculpted into what look like waves moving parallel to them. Glimpses and flashes of frozen lightning in impossible colors arc between the waves, the occasional thin tendril extending up into the area of thinner mist. Something that looks vaguely like flecks of stars streams through the air at high speed, making a low moaning sound that almost harmonizes with the engines' hum.

"Is it dangerous to go outside?"

"Yes, if you're not a trained navigator. Mostly because storms can come on suddenly."

"How does the crossing-magic work? What would have happened if I just flew into here without your ship?"

"You'd probably get turned around in the mist, and not manage to enter the ley. The crossing magic - reaches out beside itself, in a different direction than we can see. Then it gathers a lot of energy and jumps the ship sort of sideways, into another, adjacent spot. Some spirits can sense that direction, and move along it, so they can travel in the ley without a ship. Humans usually can't, though. The ship helps me sense the added dimensions so I can navigate."

"...Sounds really complicated."

"It is. I had to go to school for a while and learn a lot before I could design my ship."

Grenadine looks rather a lot like she wants to understand it, but she stays silent.

"I have some paper around here, I could teach you the basic idea? And draw out a simple engine, too."

"Ooh, thanks!"

She fetches paper and pencil.

"For the ley, there's - let's say that you lived in a flat world. You could only go side to side or forward or backward, not up or down. You wouldn't be able to see anything above or below you. There's something like that for us, who have up, down, side to side, and forward and backward. It's really hard to move along that, but some things can."

"For the engine..." She sketches a river, and a wheel sticking into it. The wheel is connected to a rod, and then to another wheel. "This is how a watermill works. You can use it to do things like grind grain. It's a very simple engine. There's also steam engines..." And she sketches a fire under the outline of a boiler, with water and rising steam in it. The steam goes into a pipe, then hits a wheel a lot like a windmill. "The fire heats the water, making steam. The steam enters the pipe and goes to push against the fan blades. The center of the fan is usually connected to a stick, which is connected to a special type of wheel called a gear. Do you have anything like these where you're from?"

"There's a water mill down in Haverstead. But no windmills. So... Hot steam makes wind? Or is wind? And then it works like a little windmill?"

"Yes. Steam likes to go upwards and out, and when it can't escape, it pushes against things. If it's in a small pipe, it pushes very fast."

"Huh. Is that because it's steam or because it's hot? Hot air blows out of a house when you open the door in winter."

"It's because it's hot, yes. Heat is a type of energy, and hot gasses that have a lot of energy like to move fast and get bigger."

"Huh. And sounds like you can make big fancy engines out of it. Like the ones downstairs."

"The one downstairs works a bit different - it uses a combination of magic and magnets to turn the rod, since it's safer and the engine can be smaller that way - but the basic idea's the same, yes."