ESFJ, 2w1, Lawful Good, Spring, Mercury 

lily you've typed the FUCKING AIRBUS

So, Eight is a plane. Yeah, there's a lot to unpack here.

One perk of being a writer and a lifelong aviation enthusiast is being able to somehow merge the two and, well, now there's a talking plane on the roof.

But let's go back to the summer of 2025, because that's when it all started.

It all began with a little trip to Toulouse, which I was insanely excited about, because Toulouse means planes, and planes mean Lily is going to be very happy. Anyway. Toulouse. Planes. Aeroscopia, one of the biggest aircraft museums in France.

There was this huge Airbus A380 standing outside in the middle of a heatwave, a prototype, one of the first A380s ever to fly, and despite the heat, I spent so long beneath its wings, so long, because somehow, standing there brought me so much peace.

And there was something else about it I couldn't quite shake. That enormous machine had been built to cross oceans, to climb above clouds, to carry hundreds of people halfway around the world, and now it was grounded on the tarmac, bound never to fly again. Why did my writer brain think that was actually sad? I have no fucking clue. I knew, I knew it was a plane, I knew it was a museum, I knew the damn thing wasn't sad about anything because, well, IT'S A PLANE. 

But well next thing I know, I come home, and we're adopting a damn SENTIENT AIRBUS.

And what started as a self-indulgent character became, well, in spite of myself, such a huge (pun intended) part of Cimetronelle.

Because Eight isn't just a talking plane; Eight has opinions, Eight has feelings, Eight is genuinely concerned about the weather, the proper execution of checklists, and the absolutely ridiculous number of things that could go wrong if we stopped following procedures for five fucking minutes.

He's also one of the gentlest people I've ever met, which is admittedly a strange thing to say about an aircraft weighing several hundred tons but here we are. 

I never expected him to become such a big part of our lives. I never expected Nick to find such a good friend in him, or Garrus to end up working on an Airbus as though that was a perfectly reasonable thing to do with his engineering skills.

But here we are.

Eight has a home now. He has people who love him, people who worry about him, people who will never look at him and see nothing but an obsolete prototype.

And I don't think I could imagine Cimetronelle without him anymore.

...even if we had to build a fucking runway on the roof.