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Every so often they found pieces of Laputa in unexpected places: an unearthly flower drifting from the sky, a shard of intricate carving nestled in mountain-peak thistles, the head of a metal giant rusted almost beyond recognition, half-buried by an underground river.
The last, Sheeta touched, eyes closing. It didn't move. They buried the head properly, to crumble over time and return to the earth from whence it came, long ago.
"Should we keep going?" Sheeta asked. She had a second sense for the weather from years of tending the farm--her true magical inheritance, she often thought. The monsoon season would return soon, flooding the cave systems.
Pazu shook his head emphatically, pointing upwards. "Lets find our way out."
Pazu learned the art of farming from Sheeta, shared his own experience with doves, leaving behind the wide spaces for this particular space between the sky and earth, still unexplored. But as months drifted by, as the battle in the sky faded in memory, ships started to fill that space once more, mapping what had existed as the silences in stories. In the distance, in many directions, smoke rose like winding spires.
"Good morning!" Pazu bellowed, each sunrise they spend on the ground. His voice cracked, like it never had before. "Good morning!"
"Good morning!" Sheeta added, an echo to his. "Aaaaah!" She dissolved into giggles as the birds jumped, twisting, and he couldn't contain his laughter.
The farm birds hopped to attention, tilting their heads inquisitively. A nearby flock took umbrage and leapt into the air, like a chirping storm. He was louder than the whirring fans overhead, but the birds did not obey his calls as his doves had.
"I'll move the cows today," he volunteered, when the shadows of those birds passed.
"Those stubborn things won't move until they've eaten their fill," Sheeta sighed. "Good luck."
Another airship passed overhead. The cows in the field raised their heads, peered upwards, then return to their food. Sheeta watched them, and Pazu watched her, as fascinated as he had been at the very beginning, but in the end both turned to their chores.
On Sheeta's shelf were: a bunch of dried flowers not found within a hundred miles, a collection of pebbles that shine but didn't sing, a twisted half-melted pipe, a single golden coin, a bent bell that had come from Tiger Moth before acquiring its new shape, two tiny miniatures of Pazu's father, and a knot of wood that, if one were to look closely, did not belong to any tree still growing on earth.
Winter stole in like a cat on whisper-soft paws, curled up around the home before even announcing it had arrived. They'd taken in the crops, drying beneath the cellar, with the help of Sheeta's family friends, but in the silence it was just the two of them. Infinitely better than the silence before, and yet. Yet. As the earth darkened, logs flared dull red in evening hearths. It made her think of scooping through rock after rock for the next vein of coal. A loud, half-drunken round of songs between miners; a recluse sheltered between tonnes of glowing rock.
"I want to fly again," Sheeta said. She turned a knot of wood in her fingers, passed it to him, and struggled to say more. "And then to go--"
"So lets fly, and then go home," said Pazu, who had once only wanted the first with the determination of a loyal son, without regard for the other. But now-- "I want both, too."
Sheeta glanced at him, startled. It relaxed into a grin.
She kissed his cheek in thanks, as she had before.
Pazu still flushed.
The earth was home, but for a week, they soared on Tiger Moth like birds spreading their wings. Hovering beside them were real birds. A gull cawed: in its claws, one moment, a shard of ceramic threaded with the glint of copper; in the next moment, it dropped, bouyed on its journey to the earth below on unpredictable air currents. Laputa, Sheeta thought, in strange places. Or maybe not. Maybe it was a treasure from the ground, brought up in airships, which would fall one day and start new stories.
Pazu's house seemed to heave with a sigh as they returned at last, skin browned by a year under the sun. Home. She'd brought her shelf of treasures along. There they stood on display, to be touched and shared by each villager that visited.
It was loud, bustling, crowded.
"Did they drift from the sky?" a villager asked, hand cupped around the knot of wood. A sly glance, no, a teasing smile her way. "Like you?"
She shared a grin with Pazu. "Yes. It joined us because in the sky, it was alone."