Ashan 10, Arc 720
Eli had found himself a rocky place by the shore to sit on, just upwind from the docks. Upwind, in his opinion, was always better than down. Wherever supplies ships and fishing boats docked or dropped anchor, and wherever the dockworkers toiled to unload their hauls or cargo, there was inevitably a collection of smells to be carried away on the breeze. Over crowded crates of live chickens or other small fowl, some of them dead or well on their way. The stench of unwashed bodies and waste, and fish and other seafood on the edge of going bad. All of it together was a toxic concoction, that would inevitable drift downwind.
More than anything, Eli was interested in flying. So before he'd set out for the shore, he'd dropped into a small secondhand shop in Desnind, and bought himself a book about sailing. In particular, the young man was interested in sailing. Large ships or smaller boats; and most importantly, the mechanics behind not just the arrangement of the sails and the way they were able to shift on a whim, but the mechanics that allowed a water going vessel to travel against the wind or the currents without oars.
It had occurred to him that the air and wind, and the ocean, streams and rivers all had something in common. Currents. Just as the boats on the water used them, so did the creatures of the air. Eli had watched an awful lot of birds in flight by now. And other creatures that lacked their feathers, like bees, dragonflies and butterflies. He'd come to understand much of the physics behind their ability to remain aloft; though it was the gliding and floating he'd been most interested in.
Eli Lamoreaux had no interest in man or Immortal made mage's work. But as for flight and the prospect of finding a way to defy the laws of physics, or rather mastering them by way of skill, ingenuity and imagination; from his perspective, there was something magical about the idea of being aloft on the wind.
Better though to go from the ground, or the water in this case, up; and it was a nice trial to watch the boats traveling up and down the coast, into the harbor or out to sea again. It was still cold out, so Eli was mostly alone by the shore. Cylus was only gone for ten trials now. But at least the sunlight had returned, and the last remaining patches of snow on the ground were beginning to melt away.
He'd brought with him all that he needed to work. His old leather satchel was stuffed with any number of things, from his notebooks and pencils, quills and pots of ink, to rules and other measuring devices, to a good spyglass. to an old physics text; and of course, the old seafaring book that he'd purchased just a break ago. He'd even picked up a few edibles to sustain him while he was out, back at the inn before he'd left.
For the time being, Eli left all those things in his sack for that first half break or so, while he watched the ships sailing by, near and far. He might have been mistaken for a layabout who was busy doing nothing but lazing the trial away and dreaming. It was only half true, and was in fact, for him, the most important part of the process.
