An Experiment

The message arrived while Colm was still cataloguing his telescope notes, brief and characteristically direct.

[Private Message from: Strawberry]"I need you for an experiment. Meet me at the eastern ridge in an hour. Bring your survey gear."

Colm read it twice, pleased despite the recent distance he'd noticed from the rest of the crew. An actual request, direct and specific, felt far more reassuring than the vague, distracted replies of the past few days.

He arrived at the ridge to find Arista waiting alongside Thoth, the mechanical dragon settled comfortably on the open grass with his wings folded against his sides.

"...An experiment?" Colm asked.

"I want to test something," Arista said, keeping her expression admirably neutral. "Aerial survey mapping. You've mapped coastlines, ocean floors, mountains, basically anything we've ever needed measured properly, but most of it has been from ground level or a ship. I want to know what happens when you get a genuine continental view."

Colm looked from her to Thoth, interest already replacing most of the lingering uncertainty he'd carried with him to the ridge. "...From his back?"

"From his back. Thoth worked out a route that'll take you over several major regions without pretending we can survey a continent two thousand kilometers across in one afternoon. High altitude, broad passes, about four hours."

That was enough to change his expression entirely.

"...Four hours?"

"I calculated the route to maximize visible geographic coverage while maintaining a reasonable flight duration," Thoth said, his dish turning toward him. "You will not observe every location directly."

"I'd be worried if you said I would."

Arista smiled. "So?"

Colm was already opening his field case. "...When do we leave?"

Getting him settled on Thoth's back took only a few minutes. He secured his map case and surveying equipment carefully, checked the straps twice, then arranged several sheets where he could reach them without risking donating half his work to the landscape below. Arista watched him prepare with visible amusement before stepping back.

"Have fun."

Colm glanced down at her. "...You're not coming?"

"I've got things to do."

The answer came quickly enough to remind him of the strangeness of the past few days, but Thoth spread his wings before the thought could settle. Within moments the ridge had fallen away beneath them, roads becoming lines and settlements resolving into shapes rather than individual buildings. Rivers Colm had mapped in disconnected sections revealed themselves as continuous systems, while routes he'd always treated separately suddenly showed the larger logic connecting them.

His notebook was open almost immediately.

"...This is going to make several of my older maps look embarrassing."

"Are they inaccurate?" Thoth asked.

"No. That's the annoying part." Colm adjusted one of his reference sheets against his knee. "They're accurate locally. I just never had a way to see how all the pieces fit together at once."

Their route carried them over the Human Kingdom first, where walled cities sat inside enormous webs of farmland and smaller settlements. Colm stopped trying to record individual details and began working in larger forms instead, tracing rivers, road networks and natural boundaries while comparing them against older charts. From the ground, detail was usually the point. From this altitude, too much detail only obscured what he was trying to understand.

The Elven forest made that lesson even clearer. From beneath its canopy, Colm knew it as trails, clearings and dense walls of green. From above, it became a vast continuous landscape stretching far beyond anything a traveler inside it could appreciate. Rivers vanished beneath the canopy and emerged kilometers later, revealing courses he'd previously pieced together from separate expeditions.

At one point he stared at an old chart for several seconds before crossing out one of his assumptions.

"...That river doesn't turn where I thought it did."

Thoth adjusted his flight slightly. "The visible branch continues east."

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"I can see that." Colm studied it with equal parts fascination and irritation. "I've had that wrong for years."

"Would you like to circle back?"

He almost said yes.

"...No. We have four hours."

"We can return another day."

Colm looked down at the forest again and smiled faintly. "...I'm going to hold you to that."

Farther on, green gave way to the Wastelands, broad stretches of exposed rock and muted earth opening beneath them. The Wastelands had always been one of the great blank spaces on Colm's maps, too dangerous to survey properly from the ground and too hostile for anyone to linger in long enough to chart with any real confidence. From above, for the first time, its scale became something he could actually begin to understand. Then he saw the crater.

At first it registered as another geological feature, large enough to blend into the surrounding terrain from their height. Its shape gave it away.

"...Is that hers?"

"Creator's railgun impact site," Thoth confirmed.

Colm had seen the measurements, reports and damage estimates, but seeing it from above was different. The crater occupied enough of the landscape that it no longer looked like the aftermath of a weapon test. It looked like geography.

"...I knew how big it was."

Thoth continued along the route.

Colm stared down for another moment. "...Apparently I didn't."

He added it to the map.

By the time they crossed toward the Demi-Human Empire, nearly three hours had passed and several sheets were already crowded with notes and corrections. Some of Colm's earliest knowledge of the region had come from copied charts and secondhand descriptions, exactly the kind of information he'd once resented relying on. Now he could see trade routes following valleys, settlements clustering around waterways, and mountain passages he'd previously known only as names on someone else's map.

Years ago, that view alone would have justified an entire expedition.

Now he was getting it while sitting on the back of a mechanical dragon because one of his friends had casually decided aerial cartography sounded useful.

The thought made him laugh.

"Did something happen?" Thoth asked.

"No. I was just thinking about how difficult it used to be to convince anyone that maps were worth funding."

"You now have access to aerial transportation."

"Yes."

"Is this an improvement?"

Colm looked down at the empire spread beneath them. "...Slightly."

Their return route eventually brought them back over the Human Kingdom, into territory Colm knew almost too well. Colm recognized the river first, then the roads, then the settlement itself. He leaned to one side as a particular cluster of buildings came into view.

"...Wait. Is that my roof?"

"Yes."

His workshop looked absurdly small from this height, just another shape tucked among dozens of others.

"...I've never seen my roof."

"You have occupied that building for a considerable amount of time."

"I know."

"You were aware it had a roof."

Colm looked forward again, fighting a smile. "That's not the same thing."

"Would you like me to circle back?"

He glanced toward the workshop already shrinking behind them.

"...Another day."

"I will remember."

By the time the fourth hour approached, his overview map was covered in corrections, and familiar regions now connected in ways he'd never had enough perspective to see before. Whatever Arista had wanted to test, the answer was obvious.

Aerial survey mapping worked extremely well.

As the fourth hour approached, Arista checked the time and opened the crew channel.

[Private Message to: All Crew]"He's on the final leg. Fifteen minutes. Everyone in position."

Below, in a meadow deliberately chosen far from the workshop, the crew moved through the last preparations. Lanterns were checked, Nettle straightened the garland made from Colm's old survey charts, and the wrapped map case was placed neatly at the center of the food-laden table.

High above them, Colm remained entirely unaware.

Thoth began descending while Colm compared the landscape below against one final reference sheet, still absorbed enough that the first lights in the meadow barely registered. Then he looked again.

There were too many lanterns.

As they descended farther, tables and decorations appeared among them, followed by the unmistakable shapes of people waiting below.

Colm lowered his map. "That's not... this isn't a survey landing point."

"No," Arista called as Thoth touched down gently at the meadow's edge. "It really isn't."

Colm climbed down slowly, his survey case still hanging from one shoulder, and stared at the lantern-lit clearing. His own early charts hung overhead as garlands, some old enough that he recognized mistakes he'd corrected years ago. The entire crew stood beneath them, watching him with expressions that made the answer arrive before anyone needed to explain it.

The short messages. Claire keeping him out of the workshop. Nettle suddenly finding reasons to leave. Four convenient hours spent nowhere near any of them.

"...You knew," he said slowly.

Arista smiled.

"This whole week. Everyone being busy, all the short replies..." He looked around again. "...You were planning this."

"Happy birthday, Colm."

For several seconds, he simply stood there.

"We've been planning it for over a week," Arista continued. "I'm sorry we made you feel avoided. That really wasn't the intention."

Colm swallowed. "...I thought I'd done something wrong."

Claire's expression softened immediately. "You've never once done anything wrong. We just wanted it to actually be a surprise."

Colm looked around at the decorations again, at old maps that had once been work and were now hanging there simply because someone had thought they were worth celebrating. The crew he'd accumulated across multiple expeditions stood beneath them, gathered for something that had nothing to do with a railway, a survey or whatever impossible project Arista wanted built next.

They were there for him.

"...Thank you," he said softly, his voice a little unsteady. "Genuinely. I didn't expect this at all."

"You've mapped nearly everything we've ever built," Arista said. "It was long past time we did something just for you."

Colm hesitated, then glanced toward Thoth. "...Was the survey real?"

Thoth's dish rotated toward him. "Yes."

Arista laughed. "I wasn't going to waste four hours of your birthday giving you fake data."

Colm looked down at the case full of fresh maps and corrections, then back at the party.

"...Good."

Bram raised an eyebrow. "That was the part you were worried about?"

Colm smiled. "...I had a very productive afternoon."