“It’s like the moon,” says Phoebe, “lone and lost,” and Cynthia calls it a shadowed path through a tangled wood, but Lucy knows the truth: love is caprice and charm, the ridiculous made beautiful and the impossible made real. Tonight, their sweet zee-captain is hers, and she spins for them a tale that leaves them laughing, of her past suitor and an act at Mahogany Hall gone improbably wrong.

They’re not her own lost love, and they know she won’t be going home, but they were never jealous, and it’s always been the story that matters; they’ll steal a dirigible for her, they promise, if she wants to fly again – but the goat, she’ll have to acquire on her own.