Something of a Pastoral View into the Blue, Morning Sky.

Dawn broke upon the waves which broke upon the beaches.  Back a ways from the shore a man gazed upwards, up the cliff face towards well worn airship moorings.  He worked on them when they came in and liked to get a look at how they cut through the sky before he fixed them up.  Today, however, he was not looking up for his professional work, but rather to see his test-project in action.

A boat was anchored a few hundred yards out into the sea, and with the light wind that chilled the morning it seemed a safe enough time to do the first out of laboratory tests.  A few specks of gray waddled out onto the precipice checking the scenery, glancing at the windsock.  Parallel to the cliff, perfect.

The man on the shore, he was called Port (for numerous reasons), bit his lip.  He would have liked to have been up there on the edge, staring down with the cloth wrapped around him, or out on the boat making sure things didn't go wrong.  As much as his mind loved the sky and the drifting and turning sailing on one of the ships, air or sea, entitled, his body and especially his stomach had always put its foot down.  Hard.  It was one of the reasons that he actually had a house and a position on shore despite being one of the most prestigious engineers the Imperial Corps of Mechanics had ever had.

These days any techie worth a damn was stationed on some airship somewhere.  The war wasn't on anymore, but the darn things always broke down so fast, it would be suicide to go out in one without someone who at least knew how to patch one up the right way.  Patch one up wrong and it was as liable to explode on you as it was to carry you in to port.

Anyway, he watched them shoot up a flair, letting the boat and him know the first test was about to start.  One waddled out onto the pier, empty air on either side.  Port was holding his breath.  The speck jumped.  For a second nothing happened, and then the tiny gray dot erupted in color.  Reds and greens and blues, yellow streaks and lavender splotches, it looked like a paint splatter came into being out of nothingness.

Instead of just falling down, or even gliding a bit, the shimmering, rainbow form began to flap, or maybe gyrate, it was hard to tell at this distance.  Either way, it wasn't going down.  Port let out a sigh of relief.  Now that the thing was open, it only had to hold up in the breeze.  His butterfly suit was a success.  Looking out at it, he knew that was what it was called.  Port had been toying with rainbow suit for a while, what with the color, and near the beginning it was his single man flight suit, but as he watched it flutter in the wind, going up and around, darting this way and that just like a butterfly, he was convinced.  Then it landed back on the cliff top out of his view.  He himself might never go up in one, but they were a beautiful show.  Looking up at the sky was really all he wanted.  Well, most days anyway.