Skyscape, Part 2, v1.0

The top deck palpitated with footsteps and the blurry crowd prattled on and on into an intensely unsatisfying hum. The colossal airship seemed so jerry-rigged and crudely tied together in the twilight sun, that it almost seemed to fall apart and decay like the clouds surrounding it.

A strange man stood at the edge of the deck, staring off into a billowy nothingness as he shifted his weight and leaned against the rusted side railing. He was puffing on a cigar, intentionally ostracizing himself from the throng of visitors. His aviator goggles gleamed fiercely against the pink and red sky. The man wore a brown leather vest that insulated a muscular torso which was crowned by a plumed collar that shimmered in the breeze like an aquiline creature ruffling its feathers.

Pilots from all corners of Skyscape were congregated into tiny groups, telling tall tales and sharing unheard news. All sorts of planes and aircraft of varying size, make, and model gathered at the end of the landing strip. It seemed as if they too were in their own little social structures, sharing amongst themselves the same silent conversations as their owners, bickering about their pilots' mechanical failures and miscalculations.

He was completely bald except for long sideburns that stormed down either cheek. Tattoos emblazoned across his arms in dark green ink, spiraling into symbolic swirls and shapes. Leather gloves were strapped around either palm as each of his fingers emerged from fingerless openings. He was harnessed in to a pair of baggy, denim pants as steel-toed boots crawled up either shin, buckle by buckle. He coolly lifted up his goggles to reveal a squat face. Wrinkles and sinewy tissue converged towards a sternly furrowed brow. He had beady eyes and a large nose that tapered into a pair of wide, flaring nostrils. Thin lips suckled the dirt-brown cigar and tightly hugged a set of grinning teeth. This phalanx of molars and canines defended a long lashing tongue that affectionately tasted the tobacco.