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Comfrey MacLeod had big dreams that could not be contained within the 2500 acres of her family's farm. She couldn't imagine living her entire life as her parents had, not knowing anything beyond Pilby's rust-colored canyons. The canyons were stunning, of course, but they had been there for millions of years and would remain there for millions more. If she were lucky, she might have close to one hundred years to live, and she intended to spend them exploring all twenty-eight of Gath's continents and whatever else lay beyond that. She longed to feel the burn of sand beneath her toes, the stickiness of tree sap between her fingers, and the sting of subzero winds on her cheeks.

When Comfrey's parents asked her to feed, bathe, or herd their guinea fowl, Comfrey would instead spend her time tinkering with scrap metal and inventing devices that could do her chores for her. Instead of recognizing Comfrey's intelligence for what it was, her parents viewed her behavior as laziness. They had been indoctrinated to believe that education was the mouthpiece of the devil, so Comfrey spent her adolescent years smuggling engineering and physics textbooks from the bookstore in Gulch Canyon and hiding them in her bedroom like most teenagers hid cigarettes or drugs. (On the other hand, Comfrey's parents synthesized their own drugs and encouraged her to partake.)

Needless to say, when Comfrey sat down at the dinner table with her acceptance letter from the People's University of Pilby to study engineering, her parents did not take the news well. Her mother barely ate and appeared preoccupied with pushing boiled vegetables and rice around her plate. Her father sawed his guinea fowl meat more aggressively than necessary and scolded her, "It's God's job to understand the universe, not ours. If He wanted us to have fancier machines, He would have made them." 

What her parents failed to realize was that Comfrey wasn't asking their permission (or God's); she was trying to say goodbye. And since they wouldn't let her, Comfrey left the ranch in the middle of the night without looking back, determined to forge a path away from the oppressive heat of the desert and her family. 

—

Comfrey's path away from Pilby came to her late on a Tuesday night during her final month of university. Since she had severed all ties with her parents, she was working in a mechanics shop to pay her bills. A grizzled traveler with a balding head and a foreign accent had stopped in that night and asked to have an oil leak in his engine repaired. Comfrey expertly found, cleaned, and patched the leak. The man whistled and slapped the metal exterior of his vehicle, clearly impressed. "Thanks, lass. Where'd a Pilban like you find two brain cells to rub together in the middle of this desert?"

Comfrey didn't know whether to be flattered or offended. "I'll be graduating from PUP with my bachelor's in engineering next month."

"Well, you're too good for these hillbillies. Tell you what. If you need a job after university, go to The Uplands and ask for Iphigenia Chapman. Tell her that Arnold Pierce sent you. I know she could use a good engineer like you."

So that was why, one month later, Comfrey hitched a ride to The Uplands by stowing away on a cargo ship. It turned out that being too cheap to buy a ticket on a commercial oceanliner had its benefits because she arrived directly in The Uplands' main industrial shipyard and was easily directed to Iphigenia. She was a tall, thin woman with ashy blonde hair that was kept in a short, practical cut. One of her eyes had a patch over it, and her other sea green eye studied Comfrey intensely. "Ol' Piercey recommended you, eh?" she shouted over the din of labor. "Then I ain't worried about your mechanical skills. Can your stomach handle treacherous waters?"

"Well, I made it across the Sinbalt Sea without feeling queasy."

Iphigenia grinned, revealing two golden front teeth. She extended a leathery hand and gave Comfrey a firm handshake. "Welcome aboard the Aetos. You're officially part of the Chapman crew."

—

Comfrey's initial time on the Chapman crew was glorious but short-lived. Seven months after joining, she got pregnant by a deckhand.  Rather than face the consequences of his actions, he quite literally jumped ship. Comfrey knew that she couldn't raise a child at sea or alone, so she begrudgingly returned to her family farm.

Every MacLeod was relieved when it became clear that Hutch was more suited to take over the family farm than Comfrey. After he came of age, Comfrey allowed herself to set her sights seaward once more. She rejoined the Chapman crew, now led by Iphigenia's daughter, Vanellope. (Iphigenia had tragically passed in an accident before reaching old age.) 

On one notable expedition, the Chapman crew sailed to the South Pole in search of Goldbeard's gold. When they arrived, they found the cavern where the bounty was supposedly hidden to be empty. Their trip was not all for naught, though. Outside the cavern, they found Daisuke Bucklesby, a reckless outlaw who would turn out to be more valuable to Comfrey than any amount of wealth.

—

"What did I tell you?" Daisuke said, shaking his head and barely able to contain his grin. It had been ten years since he had met Comfrey on the icy expanse of the Antarctic and melted her heart.

The two of them were lying on their bed aboard the Chapman vessel, opening the week's mail that had been delivered to their cabin after dinner. "Even those hoity-toity highbrows can recognize a true genius when it's right in front of them," Daisuke declared.

"I believe you told me that they'd have to be just as foolish as you to take a chance on me," Comfrey retorted.

"Exactly. Do I look like a fool to you?"

Comfrey laughed and rolled over to kiss him. Then she picked up the piece of paper from her nightstand and continued to stare at the letters as if they would rearrange themselves if she dared to look away. "What am I going to tell Van?" she wondered.

"That in six years she is going to be the bosun of the first airship powered by friodynamic lift."

That would turn out to be a true statement, and Van was all too happy to let her best engineer go because she knew that it would be. Daisuke and Van had both spent countless late nights and early mornings with Comfrey as she crunched the numbers, desperate to prove that friodynamic lift was both a possible and worthwhile pursuit. Van, the idealist, supplied encouragement and watered-down coffee. Daisuke, the contrarian, questioned her work. Most of his counterarguments were nonsensical, but occasionally he poked genuine holes in Comfrey's claims, forcing her to rework her calculations and present a robust, logical case.

And now, Comfrey was being rewarded for her efforts. She had an acceptance letter from the People's University of Pilby, offering to fully fund her PhD. She had the chance to follow her dreams and invent a vessel that could travel faster and farther than any vehicle had before. At fifty-four years old, she felt like she had finally found the meaning of her life.

— 

Comfrey did not think that the meaning of her life was teaching classical mechanics to a bunch of eighteen year-olds who mixed up centripetal and centrifugal force. Unfortunately, being the newest member of the department, she had drawn the short straw and was forced to teach the department's largest gen-ed class. Most of the students acted like it physically pained them to learn something new. They reminded Comfrey of her parents. Didn't they see how lucky they were to be able to devote years of their lives to the pursuit of knowledge?

There was one exception, though, and that was Marya Junková. She had crossed continents to attend university, moving to Pilby all the way from Scrapsylvania. While the other students studying aviation failed to see how throwing a ball in the air was relevant to flying an airship, Marya understood that they were the same thing. Yes, flying a ship was more complex, but the basic forces of the universe remained the same, and if you wanted to understand the ship, you first had to understand the ball. 

So Comfrey was not surprised when Marya was the only pupil who regularly attended her office hours despite being the student who needed the least amount of extra help. "Do you have any questions about the homework?" Comfrey asked her courteously the first time she showed up, about two weeks into the academic year.

"Oh, that?" Marya replied. "That was easy. I finished it ages ago."

Comfrey nodded politely. "Did you want to review your quiz then? You were actually the only student to score one hundred percent."

"I'm good. I actually came to ask about your research."

Comfrey sat up straight and tried not to appear too eager. "What about it?"

"Well, I intend to be the first pilot to circumnavigate Gath, and it seems like an airship powered by friodynamic lift is the best way to do that."

Comfrey recognized the expression on Marya's face—the bright eyes, the firm jaw, the slightly lifted chin. It was identical to the one she had worn as a young woman, and it was impossible for Comfrey not to be endeared by it. How silly , Comfrey thought, that we measure aging by the lack of collagen in our skin and not the lack of light behind our eyes. I don't care if Marya's skin is as shriveled as a prune when she is my age. If she still has the passion and determination to look at someone like that, I will think the years have been kind to her. 

"I see," Comfrey began cautiously. "And what makes you think you are the best person to pilot such an airship?"

"Come on, you've seen my peers. They're useless. And the older folks aren't much better. They're happy to have been the first people to fly, period. They don't care about being the first to fly across the entire planet."

"And why do you want to be the first person to circumnavigate Gath?"

"The same reason you want to invent friodynamic lift," Marya replied. "I want to do something that no one has done before. What other purpose is there in life?"

—

The thing about doing something that no one has done before is that it doesn't really matter unless other people know about it. If a tree falls in the forest, but there's no one around, does it make a sound? If the first normal air balloon departed from Pilby City on February 23rd, 1359, at 10:16 AM, traveling southwest at a speed of 200 kilometers per hour, but only four people knew about it, why should anyone else care about the time and location that it landed?

That was why Comfrey, Daisuke, Marya, and Van were in Bellenuit at an adventuring conference a few months later, presenting their research and trying to secure funding to build a full-size airship and embark on an expedition. After their presentation, Comfrey descended to the basement of the conference center to dispose of the artica iodide that she had used during a demonstration. She was ruminating on how the session had gone and didn't notice that another person was walking up the stairs opposite her. She bumped into him, spilling artica iodide all over his suit.

"Shit, I'm so sorry!" Comfrey exclaimed.

"It's quite all right," the stranger assured her. He patted his briefcase. "Luckily, nothing got on my manuscript." He extended his hand. "Montgomery LaMontgommery, but please call me Monty. Pleasure to make your acquaintance."

"Comfrey MacLeod. I'm a huge fan of your books, and I wish we were meeting under less embarrassing circumstances."

Monty chuckled. "You've got nothing to apologize for. I once had a mountain goat pee on me because I was standing right underneath the cliff where he liked to do his business." He sighed whistfully. "That was the start of our beautiful friendship."

"I guess that's the life of an adventurer," Comfrey conceded, "but I'd still like to make it up to you in some way."

"Well, I do have to change my clothes. Would you be able to let my sponsor, Cadswitch Gotch, know that I may be a few minutes late to our meeting? He should be waiting for me at a table in La Perle Rare."

"Certainly."

—

Cadswitch Gotch was a cheerful fellow with a curly mustache that seemed as eccentric as his interests. He was unfazed by Monty's wardrobe mishap. "That just gives me more time to talk with you!" he told Comfrey, gesturing for her to take a seat in the chair across from him. 

"I really don't want to impose…"

"Nonsense," Cadswitch insisted. "The more the merrier!"

So that was how Comfrey ended up in the fanciest restaurant she had ever been in telling the richest man she had ever met about her time on the Chapman crew and her current research on friodynamic lift, including her plans to sail to Zood in a normal air balloon.

"You really think it's out there?" Cadswitch asked, unable to contain his excitement. Comfrey affirmed that she did just as Monty pulled up a chair. "You have to go with her!" Cadswitch insisted to Monty.

"Where?"

"Zood."

"I'd love to."

"We could use someone with your natural knowledge on the crew," Comfrey told him.

"Then it's settled," Cadswitch declared with the authority of someone who was wealthy enough to never be told no. "I will fund your expedition if Monty will catalogue the natural flora and fauna of the land, and you will bring back any precious metals or new technologies that you discover."

Comfrey could hardly believe it. "You'd do that?"

"I not only will, but I must. It is my life's passion to finance those devoted to doing the unimaginable. In fact, to demonstrate my commitment to your mission, I will pay for drinks for you, Monty, and the rest of your crew during your stay in Bellenuit!"

They clinked glasses, and Comfrey left to bring her friends so they could partake in the merriment. The group stayed up until morning, and Comfrey could tell that this would be the first of many glorious nights between them. It was the first time she felt on top of the world while her feet were on solid ground.