[ Balthier helps Alina up, noting that she is not quite as gentle on her injured leg though she is still being cautious. Good. She won't reinjure it that way.

As she settles, he mounts the craft. He's getting used to being in the driver's apparatus instead of the gunner seat. He barely has to think about reaching for the Mist despite it being quieter here.

The craft whirs to life, filling with light as it begins to lift quietly from the ground. The nearby children gape and laugh in delight. He slowly takes it up to about twelve or fifteen feet in order to clear the majority of the people and stalls. And he enjoys showing off. ]

Fran was [was] a woman of few words who could strike a man dead at three hundred feet with a bow or a fire bolt, had excellent command of most battle and subterfuge magicks, and was a good deal wiser than almost any living creature I'd ever encountered. Excellent taste in tea, too.

[ He hopes that the past tense is inappropriate because she somehow survived the explosion too. But it's been over a month and she hasn't awakened here; what are the chances she survived somewhere else?

They aren't nothing, and foolish as it is, he clings to that. ]