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D

emetrius was woken by a slight sound. The hum of the engines was almost comforting in the background but he had heard something that scraped. He got to his feet and listened at the door. He heard the scrape again.

Cautiously, he opened the door. He wasn’t sure what he would find outside his room. It was late and most of the crew was in bed. Just the night watch was awake.

Demetrius was surprised to see the passenger, Puck, just outside his door. The man had his back turned to Demetrius. Puck was crouched over and working on something on the opposite wall of the corridor by the Captain’s door.

Demetrius cleared his throat and the passenger, Puck, jumped and spun around in surprise. Demetrius asked, “What are you about, Puck? Nothing sinister, eh?”

Puck flashed a grin. “Hardly. I dropped something and I’m trying to find it. I know I dropped it in this corridor but it is so blasted small it is taking a while to find it.”

That didn’t explain the scraping sound but it wasn’t Demetrius’ place to interrogate the man. He might mention it to the Captain in the morning, though he thought the Captain might already realise that their passenger was a weird one. Demetrius thought when he went on this adventure it would be more interesting than listening to engineers debating the merits of clockwork creatures and automata over supper. The only person who had appeared interesting, with weapons strapped to his body, had turned out to be a dim-witted gun-happy man.

Demetrius’ parents would not be pleased when they heard he had come along to rescue Hermia. They had been the driving force behind him marrying Hermia. If she hadn’t run off, he would have run off himself. He wasn’t interested in marrying someone he didn’t know. He had told Hara the truth when he said he wanted to come along so the two of them could actually get to know each other. Demetrius might have defied his parents by coming on this airship but he knew when he returned they would put a huge amount of pressure on him to marry Hermia and he wanted to be sure that he could actually like her when he caved.

Demetrius asked, “You want a hand to look for your missing... whatever it is you are missing?”

Puck waved it off. “I might wait for the morning when the light is better. But thank you for the offer.”

Puck sauntered off towards his room and Demetrius shrugged and returned to his own bed. He had other things to worry about besides an eccentric engineer.