After a not inconsiderable time, Lovett stood astride the decks, and inhaled. The air seemed sweeter, crisper than normal, and there up on the hills the air was not just air. It had that unmistakeable hint of aether. Aether, that mysterious substance that few understand and even fewer have embraced, but finally, his work was complete.

Inhaling again, the taste of aether stronger in his lungs, a hint of serenity passed his brow; this was a moment of tumultuousness, for he was excited to be finally complete in his work, and yet even as sure as he was in his heart that it would work, he could not help but fear the consequences should any of his calculations have been wrong... what if the aluminium bracers were set too far apart? What about the boiler piping welds? The rivets in the deck fastenings?

A hundred and one minor weights descended upon him, but no matter; the joy at finally being complete after his months of work overrode that, and the high penetration of aether in the air around him gave him cause to ignore his doubts.

Even as he watched, the buoyancy of the aether tugged gently at the foils of his work, ever so gently dancing with the ropes that bound it, as he began the final pre-launch step: filling the airbag.

Although the wood and leather and metal of the hull was a striking enough shape, no other shape in the world was as distinctive as the airbag that was to rise above the hull and pull the craft aloft. Even in his months of work Lovett had never actually seen the airbag filled with gas to hoist his creation, today would be the first time he would actually fill it... and find if his calculations about weight were correct.

As the minutes passed by, and the gas hissed ever more noisily, forcing the airbag into a rigid form around the frame, Lovett felt more enthusiastic and nervous. For all his ingenuity, he still wondered deep down if he were made of stern enough stuff to actually fly his creation.

The nozzle on the airbag popped, distracting him from himself, the gas pumping was complete. With a slight smile, Lovett noticed that his creation was gently floating off the ground - barely a foot, he noted with concern, but the good ship looked no more a contraption, no more a strangely twisted collection of struts and beams and boards and a deflated leatherwork. It looked elegant, smooth... and complete, as it poised to explore strange new lands.

Lovett inhaled once more, letting the aether flow into his lungs, and he knew that finally it was time. Untying the mooring rope, and stepping up the gangplank, he felt the ship move slightly as it took his weight, though he noted the ship didn't touch the ground. Pulling the mooring rope up to avoid it snagging, Lovett opened the door to the engine room, and began to shovel.

He hadn't dared to properly light the boiler before, doing small tests to check his pipework, but nothing more than that. Now, though, his shovelling more fervently, and within a short while the boiler was glowing brightly, with Lovett's brow dripping with sweat. "Must find an engineer!" he thought, but the thought was short-lived as he strode back up on deck.

The wind glanced through his hair, the aether tasting that much sweeter, as the ship rose above the ground, as the ship glided forward, the aether lifting it into the clouds, with the engine powering it forward.

With a small turn of the wheel, Lovett - now truly the captain of his vessel - embraced every subtle movement of his ship, feeling it under him, feeling it part of him, and him part of it.

And with a nod to the storybooks he had read, he named the ship Pandora, for it would unleash to him the manyfold things in the world, both good and bad, and reward him for the hope and dream of flying above the clouds.

"Now, horizon," he thought, looking off to the distant north, far away from his home, "what do you have for me?"

Neat!

What's Aether though? I recognise the term.

Æther is a substance typically found in steampunk. It is notionally a gas of a similar weight to air though frequently a little more dense, originally named from the Greek personifications of the upper sky.

Taken from some notes I have on the subject in another forum (reposted with permission)

Quote

Aether is an invisible gaseous substance free-floating in the biosphere (i.e. from ground level, to a certain distance up the atmosphere, prolly just around the cloudlines so that airships may still take advantage of hiding in clouds).

Among aether's properties:
A ) aether is normally slightly heavier than air, thus its "flooding" of the lower levels of the biosphere, and yet it is not that heavy; there's still enough undisplaced air down there to sustain lifeforms, albeit at reduced capacity due to lower concentrations of essential gasses.
B ) moving aether generates lift (perhaps requiring some mechanism to "capture" the lift).
C ) condensed aether aids in ship repairs.
D ) breathing in aether, although is not fatal, nevertheless suppresses some hormones related to agression. ergo, Aether is a pacifying substance.
E ) Aether also have healing properties, accelerating cell repairs, etc.

Again, it is one of those things that defies a single discrete definition. The æther is typically also linked to phenomenon such as the Aurora Borealis with a degree of mysticism.

Ahh I getcha

Yeah, aether can mean a myriad of things.  It can even be considered to have a mind to it, such as the metaphysical portion of the Collective Unconscious proposed by Carl Jung.  Oddly, in the modern age, the Noosphere pretty much does exactly what the Collective Unconsciousness supposedly did from a metaphysical viewpoint; link everyone's minds together on some base level.

Though I've never heard it put as suppressing hormones and aiding cell repair.  Where'd you get that list from?