Chapter 3 – The Plane

The creature chains the Traveler to a workbench in the castle’s minaret. A vertical sprocket cable, emerging from the wall, drives the gears beneath the table. The meshing gears send stress waves rolling over the black travertine floor. They crush particles still lodged between its teeth. The gears torque a shaft that rotates a bevel gear beneath the ceiling. The bevels turn a horizontal sprocket chain to which shards of glass dangle above the Traveler’s body.

The chains crush him, hold him down, but his arms flail, crisscrossing his chest. His scream punctures the night’s silence and echoes in the canyon. A lurid purple glow infuses the room and weakens his attachment to his shadow, enough for the gear-driven glass to sever it.

A shadow the size of the Traveler hovers above the table. The shadow’s arms try to grab onto the Traveler, to reattach itself, but it loses its grip, and the shadow is sucked into a funnel at the end of the table, down a tube, through the wall and into the canyon below: food for the vortices.

She has claimed another; but the sinister creature enjoys not, her new capture.

She had been hearing the rumors that someone was on the way. She wonders who this unlikely challenger is—this girl named Sofia—destined to pound on the gates of her castle.

The creature hisses in anger. Forms swirl in the corners of her castle. She grows volatile as she moves.

“Go! Take down that plane!” she screams into the maw of the endless night.

In an explosive burst, hundreds of dark vortices lift into the night and fly toward the eastern sky, to meet a plane on a runway at the other end of the spectrum.

“And smash it, smash it, smash it into the sea!” it screamed.

“Bit of a drama queen, don’t you think?”

***

Baggage-drop: graceful relaxation; security: constipated.

Directly in front of Sofia’s family, a horde of Comic-Con die-hards decided to turn airport security into a cosplay parade, treating the conveyor belt like red carpet for action figures. Space Aliens with shiny cue-ball heads took their place followed by the blue dude from Avatar, Trolls, Elves, and a vintage GI Joe with the Avengers passing through the X-Ray scanner.

But the real showstopper was how these fanatics navigated the full-body scanner, putting their right foot in, taking it out, putting it in, doing the hokey-pokey like a cosmic conga line.

Dad's irritation soared as he snapped, ‘What is taking them so long?’ He saw his wife’s glowing expression, retreated, and changed the channel to “GI Joe was my favorite,” as he raised his hands over his head in the full-body scanner.

“Daddy played with dolls, too,” Mom whispered to Sofia as she waited her turn.

“It was not a doll, it was a soldier,” Dad insisted from the booth.

“Well, now he’s Barbie’s boyfriend,” one of the Comic-Con contingents concluded, overhearing the boomer.

“The end times are here,” Dad muttered.

“What was that?” asked the TSA agent. “What did you mean by that, sir?”

“Nothing. Sorry. Oops!”

They entered the main concourse.

A toy store blossomed on the right, deep as a cave, squeezed between a currency exchange and a perfume shop—parallel worlds of commerce, desire, and dreams.

A glass works shop sparkled on the left side of the concourse. Its adjacent coffee and pastry shop infused the area with the roasted fragrance of the Amazon.

“I’d like to check the crystal shop over there,” Mom said. “Might find a centerpiece vase for the living room—get an idea,” Mom continued, to her husband, “Go play with the Toys,” and then to Sofia, “Go watch him.”

Stuffed animals swayed from the ceiling of the toy store. Prisms, lanterns, strobe lights, and flashlights illuminated the wall behind the cashier’s counter. Telescopes, kaleidoscopes, microscopes, stethoscopes, periscopes, bore-scopes and even an oscilloscope—anything to keep a child focused on a long flight; and for everyone else to see that the story was about to happen right now, before their very eyes—festooned the facing counter.

Sofia noted her dad playing with a wind-up toy—a springy-thingy whatchamacallit with four thin, long, flexible elastic legs—while she herself tried to decipher the optical devices that graced the back wall.

“Sofia turned from the optical devices to watch her father. He wound a butterfly knob, locking it with a switch, and pressed a button that sent the toy jumping like a Chihuahua on caffeine, joy radiating from his face.”

Sofia’s mother arrived with coffee for herself, after having purchased cannoli from the espresso shop—she’d been married to the man and knew she would need reinforcements for the journey.

Dad stepped back from the jumping toy and knocked a toy boomerang off the counter.

“Well,” her dad said, looking down at the boomerang on the floor, oblivious to the gathering audience, “aren’t you coming back? You’re supposed to come back,” before bending down to retrieve the boomerang, “I have to do everything myself.”

“Imagine that?” muttered his wife.

The bearded shopkeeper, a forest green pagri swirling like a halo, set aside stacking when he noticed Sofia’s dad rewinding the whatchamacallit.

Sofia’s mom set down the bag of cannoli and, together, she and Sofia watched the man, eyes ablaze (initially his; theirs too), catch the toy that jumped off the counter and into his hands.

The shopkeeper, clearly Indian, was meanwhile speaking to a customer, “Would you like a telescope or a microscope,” in a Russian accent; but kep glancing at Sofia’s dad.

“I found a perfect centerpiece for the table,” Sofia’s mother remarked, pointing to the gift shop across the pedestrian concourse. “It’s Venetian glass. It’s delicate,” she added as she watched her husband pick up the boomerang from the floor. “I don’t know if it’s wise to have that in the house.”

“The Venetian glass?” Sofia asked as she leaned forward and up to watch the smile roll over her mom’s face.

Sofia turned to look across the concourse, through the flowing crowd of terminal workers, passengers, toward a member of a flight crew with the red umbrella who was waiting in line for coffee as he finished explaining to the pilot, “And that is what the red umbrella means; part of my life; and I will never let the flaming go, capisce?” and then onward to the glassworks glittering, adding, “Mom, I think I know what I want to do when I grow up.”

“What’s that baby-love?” her mother responded to Sofia, setting down her coffee, mesmerized by her husband’s ability to play with the toys, thinking, “This is why he forgets to mow the lawn—it’s not focus; men just have more colorful excuses.”

“The vase is pretty,” added Sofia who returned her gaze to her father who was rewinding the toy, while her mom returned to the here and now. “Why is daddy like a boy sometimes?”

“Isn’t it? I don’t know—doesn’t talk. It’s in the shape of a chrysanthemum, opening,” her mother continued, as she returned her gaze to the vase across the concourse, “Fragile. I think I am beginning to understand him, though. Glimmers in the light—he gets sad, too. It’s red and yellow in the middle—marble at the base; I wish he could let it go and be the rock. It’s as if he’s sliding through life on Saturn’s rings. The orange glass blossoms from the green stem, blood red on the petal tips.”

Sofia glanced across the corridor at the vase ablaze in the sunlight, while her mother turned to her husband, repeating, “Very delicate,” and then to Sofia, asking, “Do you think he remembers we are here?”

Sofia refocused on her dad as he released the lock, sending the toy jumping. He raised jazz hands to accentuate the fireworks he imagined exploding around him.

“It’s pretty.”

“It would be perfect for the dining room table,” her mother added as her husband knocked the boomerang off the display, again.

“Boomerang, huh? Then act like one,” her dad snapped at the boomerang, as he bent over to retrieve both toys, adding with a contralto, “Come back, Toto, come back.”

The shopkeeper watching Dad from behind a rack holding Greeting Cards of San Diego, now ignoring the customer, whispered, “No, it’s: run, Toto, run,” in his Russian accent, as the crowd grew, “Telescopes, anyone? Microscopes?”

Sofia’s mom, hearing this, looked over to the shopkeeper, lowered her head and raised her eyebrows in acknowledgement.

“A writer, I think, yes,” Sofia said.

The shopkeeper nodded approval.

“Wonderful!” her mom said, turning to her. “You would be a great writer. Maybe too fragile. What do you want to write about?”

“There’s a story, a dream, I had. I think, I will write about it,” Sofia said as she clutched the little star hanging from her pants.

The shopkeeper moved over to stand beside Sofia and her mom, as Sofia’s dad picked up the toy from the floor.

“You could write about this,” her mom said, pointing to her husband.

“I’m not that good,” Sofia answered.

“No one is,” whispered the shopkeeper.

“I think I’ll buy that orange vase when we come home,” her mom said, then turning to Sofia, “Sorry, what’s the story, sweetie?” as her husband set down the toy, locked and loaded, distracted now by a second jumpy toy.

Sofia explained her dream story about a star that fell from the sky and caused a commotion in a classroom, as her father picked up the second whatchamacallit.

“That’s a lovely story,” Sofia’s mother said as she glanced at the eavesdropping shopkeeper who nodded in agreement.

“What is he doing now?” Sofia asked.

Her dad had wound up the second toy. The shopkeeper braced himself as he turned to watch Sofia’s mother, amazed by her patience.

“I don’t have a clue,” her mother said.

The shopkeeper whispered, “No one does,” as the crowd of spectators continued growing. “Maybe he has to write his story, too.”

Her husband released both buttons and both toys jumped over the table, slammed into each other, and fell off the sales desk, to the floor, and got entangled with each other and with her husband’s shoelaces, the boomerang landing on top.

Together, Sofia and her mother, along with the shopkeeper and the other patrons, watched as youth blossomed in the man. Dad looked down at the tangled conglomeration of untied shoelaces, two whatchamacallits and a boomerang, and shouted, “This boomerang is broken!”

Then Sofia looked up and saw it on the ceiling: a stuffed mallard hanging just above the counter—yellow beak, green head, brown body, and pink feet—right in front of her eyes.

Her dad approached the salesclerk with both toys his hands, but first turned and looked at his wife who lip-sync’d “On the plane? To play with?”

Mom turned away to hide her smile.

Dad realized this purchase would not happen, and he set the toys down, the smile evaporating, muttering, “I wanted that toy.”

Suddenly, a power surge caused the toys hanging from the ceiling to start spinning.

Then the duck winked.

Sofia gasped, “What is happening?”

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The family began moving toward the boarding gate as the shop keeper offered to employ Sofia’s father. “You come back, work for me,” then turning to Sofia’s mom, added, “That glass vase over there, my other shop, I’ll make you an offer—you can’t refuse.”

Sofia turned to look back at the duck as the group of pilots and flight attendants, the red umbrella, and the Comic-Con conga line, moved past as her father whispered, “I liked playing with that toy—there were gears and an elastic coil, and I liked watching the behavior.”

The shock wave of the winking duck transformed the elastic, orthotropic trabecular structure in Sofia’s femur into that of a visco-hypo-elastic solid and she stumbled, turning back to the duck while overhearing her mother say to her father, “Stop over-explaining bone structure—no one needs those details.”

Her mom and dad practically pulled her onto the plane, like two rubber duckies in a bathtub nudging a supertanker to its berth in Brooklyn before the arrival of a Mediterranean hurricane spiraling down the drain after her mom had pulled the plug on the bubble bath.

The gate agent had announced the flight was not full, so Sofia had asked if she could sit behind her parents by the window with an empty seat to her left while her dad argued with a passenger who was stuffing a large suitcase over his jacket, “Dude, that’s mine, do you mind?”

His wife exhaled and turned the page of her magazine.

Sofia turned to look out the cabin window to watch the tarmac luggage loaders immersed in an epic battle to extract a small white mouse crouching beneath the left rear wheel of the plane, as a bar-coded baggage-tagged plastic pink flamingo made its way up the cargo ramp.

One of the baggage handlers turned around, glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching, spread his buttocks, bent forward, grimaced, and then subtly sniffed the air. His shoulders relaxed in apparent relief, and he walked away; and Sofia giggled.

A large piece of luggage opened as it moved up the ramp. It emitted a mysterious violet light. Sofia noticed two yellow eyes gazing at her from within the bag. A feathery disturbance zipped the luggage lid closed again, while the pink flamingo began to sling fisticuffs at what appeared to be a stuffed brown starfish.

“Let it go,” her mom nudged to her dad. “It’s a jacket, it’s not the end of the world.”

The mouse ran out, stopped, turned, looked up to Sofia, winked and waved before making its escape, as the bag opened again, briefly and a tagged plastic pink flamingo was pulled back into the bag and the luggage zipped closed.

“What is happening?” Sofia thought when she watched the mouse. “The duck, and the mouse; and dad’s flamingo.”

A burst of sunlight burst through the clouds and a crisp rainbow shimmered into existence above the airport.

“Isn’t that lovely?” Sofia heard a woman say.

While Sofia had been looking out the window, a woman with swept-back grey pixie hair, wearing a crisp blue pantsuit, pearls, diamond earrings, and crimson red Jimmy Choo pumps, had sat in her row, in the aisle seat on her left, leaving the middle seat empty.

“Good morning, my dear travelers,” a voice announced, “This is your Captain, Ntozake Shange, welcoming you aboard, this lovely morning. Please, now, to direct all marked attention to all instructions on the screens, now descended with grace. In line for takeoff, yes indeed, on this blooming day, however there will be a slow-down due to last night’s storm ferocity, and this morning’s late arrivals from San Diego’s great beyond.”

Sofia and the woman both turned their attention to the lowering screens.

Upon watching the safety instructions, “fit the metal fastener into the clasp,” from the video, Sofia leaned over to her new companion and said, “One day, we’ll be flying across the galaxy, hopping from planet to planet and the flight attendants in the future will still have to explain how to buckle a seat belt.”

From the row in front, her father smiled on hearing this as he snapped his belt and turned to his wife, poised to speak.

Her mother turned to him and said, “Just like you.”

Her father smiled, muttering, “Pluto.”

“That’ll be our little footnote,” the woman whispered to Sofia.

“Good idea,” nodded her father. “A footnote to clear the debris from the orbit.”

“Please don’t,” her mother said to her father.

“Too late.”

“Pluto. Should’a been a contender!” her dad shouted.

Her mother turned back to Sofia and shook her head to express, “We can still switch seats.” She then turned to her husband and added, “If you stopped taking out your hearing aids, you’d know everyone on the plane heard you.”

However, Sofia’s dad did not hear his wife due to the newest fixation. He had mistakenly tangled his shoelaces with his backpack beneath the seat before him and was trying to unhook his foot while his wife looked on, half nonplussed, and half not nonplussed, amidst his use of other shimmering words and incantations.

“Let’s hope that clarifies how to use the word nonplussed in a sentence.”

The last Sofia remembered was her companion’s smile as she drifted into sleep as the plane lifted anchor and ascended into the heavenly abyss.

***

Sofia gazed out the window at a thundercloud billowing ominously in the distance, as if it were auditioning for a horror movie. Just as she contemplated how the cloud might be hiding something sinister, it dissolved, revealing an alien spaceship that zoomed up to the plane’s window like it was preparing for a selfie.

Inside the cockpit, two aliens appeared, each sporting large, smooth, bald heads that glistened menacingly under the cabin lights. They peered into her eyes as if weighing her soul, then turned to whisper conspiratorially to each other.

With a gasp, Sofia blinked to clear her eyes, but the spaceship-cloud sparkled with internal flashes of violet lightning, casting an unsettling purple glow into the fuselage. One alien leaned over, grabbing a strap, and yanking it like it was trying to strangle the other, who was clutching a small GI Joe with a look of sheer panic.

Suddenly, Sofia heard the ominous sound of shearing steel. Her own plane began to vibrate like a washing machine on its final spin cycle, and overhead compartments burst open like popcorn kernels in a microwave. Every color of the electromagnetic spectrum sparkled chaotically, creating a psychedelic light show that screamed, “This is not your average flight!”

The second alien fumbled wildly, struggling to lock a seat belt, its expression a mix of determination and impending doom. Sofia screamed from deep within her world, a mix of fear and disbelief.

***

Sofia snapped awake to turbulence, whispering, “Just a dream. It was just a dream. No spaceships.”

However, had the cabin been transparent, the passengers would have shrieked at the sight of the helices of black wind clutching the tail of the plane as it blasted through a layer of clouds. Deep within one of the turbines was something that no one would have seen: a small orange glow behind a cloud of smoke.

The plane fell, and Sofia, restrained by the seat belt, felt the acceleration. Outside the window, she saw the wings swaying.

“Mom,” Sofia said. “It’s flapping like a bird—it’s not supposed to fly like that. There was a spaceship out there.”

“It will be fine, Sofia,” Mom called back.

The woman leaned forward and reassured Sofia’s mother, with a tap on the shoulder, and a smile, and turned to Sofia and said, “It was just a cloud—and you have a lovely imagination, young lady.”

Further along the fuselage, an over-head cabinet snapped open and a child's stuffed baboon from the San Diego Zoo fell onto one of the passengers.

Outside, blackness engulfed the plane, as it rolled to the left, and then the right, and then pitched, nose-down.

The plane rose and then took another fall. One of the flight attendants with flaming auburn hair tripped and flailed her arms as she fell.

In the cabin, people exhaled forgiveness (blame someone and forgive), prayed (reeling in regrets), leaned forward against the seat in front in a brace position (drama queens who never learned to lip sync), grasped with great care for pills to relax (don’t confuse them with Viagra). Rows in front, a little boy vomited (to get even with his sister—and on her). Anxieties blossomed in overlapping conversations, while her dad inspected the oxygen mask door, muttering “This shit better open.”

Sofia’s mother turned the page of her magazine while her dad stated his fear about the overuse of fiber-reinforced composite materials in the aerospace industry that could fail in a catastrophic delamination that would fracture the fuselage causing the plane to crash, explode and kill everyone on board as her mother turned another page of her magazine.

While ratcheting into the sky, the plane fell again, rising, losing its grip, and falling before ratcheting up again—two steps forward, one back.

Sofia clutched the edge of the seat and found herself holding hands with the woman seated next to her.

“We’ll be fine, precious,” the woman said to Sofia. “We’re in the strongest, most powerful ship ever built, and we will not flip and fall,” she continued, holding Sofia’s hand.

“The Purple Cat. She’s trying to catch me!” Sofia whimpered, squeezing the woman’s hand tightly.

“Don’t be a pussy,” the woman replied as she burped loudly.

Sofia froze.

“Cat,” the woman added quickly, “Excuse me. I’m sorry,” pausing, then continuing, “I don’t know why I said that. Gas. I meant pussy cat—don’t be a frightened cat. Turbulence, sorry for that,” she finished, before whispering, “I gotta stop smoking that skunk before a flight.”

“The Purple Cat’s trying to steal my shadow,” Sofia insisted, awash from the delirium of the departure, and the possible collapse of another towering bluff in the aisle seat beside her.

“I sound ridiculous,” the woman muttered to herself.

“I don’t understand,” said Sofia, confused by the woman’s mutterings, “What did you say?”

“Excuse me,” the woman replied, “Just ignore that. Our ship,” the woman continued after clearing her throat, “Where was I? Oh yes. The ship. That’s right. It’s a Viking ship, and, um, we are sailing over a fjord of magical sea monsters. Yes, that’s right. You can’t see it, but we have a mast above us, billowing sails and a magic dragon leading us onward, and our pilot’s name means she who walks with lions, and she will lead us through the storm. I sound like an idiot.”

The plane leveled. The roaring subsided. The turbulence dissipated. The passengers relaxed (except for one man who sat erect—it wasn’t a sleeping pill).

Sofia calmed down. Outside, the plane skirted a grey ocean of clouds.

Over the speaker, the captain Shange announced, “I apologize for the turbulence, over is the worst of this shaking, we have risen above the winds, so fierce,” and the plane continued its ascent, calmly.

Sofia relaxed and smiled at her new friend. They continued holding hands until the luggage that had fallen from the overhead compartments, had been re-stowed.

“Nothing takes down our ship. Now, where are you off to today, Pepper?” the woman asked.

“To fight the Purple Cat —” Sofia paused, shook the dream from her head, and then continued, “—my shadow back from...” She paused again, adding, “The eclipse took… those kids laughed… to visit my grandmother in Norway, and how did you know my nickname?”

“That’s wonderful,” the woman interrupted, as she tapped Sofia’s mother’s shoulder. “Such important things to do, for such a beautiful young lady. We must protect our shadows—they follow us. Even in recovery, we need them; they remind us of our journey forward. And you’re slaying dragons back home?”

The woman caressed Sofia’s left hand as Sofia continued to calm down.

“I start a new school soon,” Sofia added, “But how did you know my nickname?”

“Gas.”

Sofia’s mom turned to observe, and the older woman nodded with a soft smile.

Sofia twirled her hair and continued, “But I don’t know. I’m not like the other kids. They have clothes,” she answered as she let her doll fall from her grasp onto the floor.

“Well, you can’t expect them to walk around naked, can you?” the woman said. “Maybe they haven’t broken free of, what did you call it? The Purple Cat? Or maybe they’ve lost…”

“Their shadows?” Sofia interrupted.

“Yes, of course. That’s lovely, my little one—individuality.”

“My friends are going to a different school,” Sofia interrupted.

“Oh, precious, I am sorry. But imagine, when you see them again, you all bring new friends from your new school to the party,” the woman continued.

“They already have their groups.”

“Well slap me in the face with a fish,” the woman continued after a moment’s hesitation. “Those kids in groups—they never let you make up your own mind. They look into your eyes to see their own reflections.”

“Reflections are bad?” Sofia asked, cable straining.

“Yes,” her dad said in the front seat, as he prepared to turn and speak to his daughter.

“I know, you know,” his wife interrupted, retraining her husband, “but it’s her life; she needs to hear it from others, too.”

Sofia’s dad sat back into deep thought, looked out the window, and thoughtfully wondered if he talks too much.

“You do,” his wife said, aloud.

Her husband swiftly turned to look at his wife, who turned a page in her magazine.

“The larger the audience,” the woman continued to Sofia, “the less you change—you can’t leave the stage if the applause won’t let you go,” she said. “Their adoration locks you into one way of seeing yourself. Maybe this is your time to leave the mirror, my angel, leave the stage,” pausing and adding in yet another mysterious whisper, “Why do women always get these motherly lines?”

“You read my mind?” Sofia’s dad asked his wife.

“Yes.”

“So, what do you see inside here?” Dad asked his wife.

“I’m confused,” Sofia said to the woman. “What’s inside those kids? Why do those kids think those things?”

“There’s nothing in there.”

“Sometimes, I don’t think I know anything,” Dad said as he bit his knuckle and exhaled.

Sofia’s mom smiled in agreement and said to her husband. “Yes, you do, if you stop wallowing in the past without feeling it, but this time, let that woman advise Sofia; and let her have the glory.”

“Hole. It’s just an empty hole in those kids,” answered the woman. “Just influencers who don’t want you to change and grow, so they can keep the audience.”

“I want the fun,” Dad said to his wife, “But sometimes I forget the fun is in me.”

Light from the rising morning sun blasted through the windows and ignited the fuselage with an orange glow. It refracted off the diamond earrings the woman was wearing. Rainbows glittered throughout the cabin.

“How’d they get inside?” Sofia exclaimed.

“They must have come here to see you on your journey to battle that terrible purple cat,” the lady began before sinking into a strange melancholy, adding, just above a whisper, “Honestly, I don’t mind dishing this sugary shit, bit sometimes I wish I was one of the crazies, too. Women give the advice all the time—motherly instinct, my ass—while the men have all the fun.”

Unsettled by the woman’s eccentric murmurings, Sofia whispered, “What?”

“Never mind, Pep. I just lost my train of thought, again—the cabin pressure makes my head spin and, you know, gas.”

Sofia refused to let go of the woman’s hand and tightened her grip, drawn to the sudden appearance of the eccentric, in the lady—because you never know when the towering bluffs collapse.

“And what do I adore most about rainbows?” the woman continued with a rising intonation. “By the way, just ignore what I just said, Pep, just a moment ago—I was thinking of something else. As I was saying—now where was I—oh yes, you can never tell where the red ends and the orange begins in a rainbow.”

“Is that important?” Sofia asked.

“Try looking for where one color becomes another in a rainbow. So much, so: where the green becomes the yellow or the yellow becomes the orange—find beauty there; when you see it, time stops; you will see everything happens at once—all stories; mine, yours, your dads, and it’s all the same story, and you will write your story.”

“You said you can’t see where the colors flow.”

“Yes, but never stop trying, sweet Pepper. If you see a difference between yourself and another, there is always someone in between, another color, to bridge the difference. You’ll learn to see beauty that way; and the search for beauty makes you beautiful.”

“True, but trite—like she said.”

Dad nodded in agreement, as the woman inhaled deeply and then continued, “Don’t choose one thing, one way, one color. Don’t open just one door. Open all the doors—and go through all the passageways, Pepper, and” she added with a melodic intonation, “And dance among the stars.”

“Maybe I should go through rainbow circles?” Sofia asked as glanced out the window, seeing a perfectly round rainbow.

“Smashing! Through round rainbows—you can see them from a plane, you know, when the earth is not hiding the other half,” the woman affirmed. “You’ll defeat the Purple Cat and come home through a circular rainbow of light—a glory hole in the fabric of space and time.”

Then the woman leaned over and whispered, “And it’s not that I didn’t like pink—no, no, no. I just loved the color blue.”

Layup, slam, dunk, friends for life.

The two new friends talked for a while before Sofia drifted off to sleep, talking to herself as she fell into slumber, “Why does everyone’s luggage fall on me?” while the older woman, falling into her own somnolence, muttered, “Why do the men always get the funny lines, and women are reduced to Kansas carnies spinning cloying clichés like cotton candy,” as she joined Sofia in dreamland, “And I was all set to explain the Green Flash to this girl—and now some man is going to do it.”

“To be fair, she did get the line about the glory hole.”

As they were both now asleep, neither saw it. No one on the plane saw it, just outside the window. Before the sun, ninety-three million miles away, dipped below the horizon, and was gone for the day, a brilliant laser of intense monochromatic light—a brilliant green flash—streaked across the sky.

However, deep within the turbines of the jumbo jet, immersed in a magical eerie light and a haze of smoke, fumed a creature with dark coal eyes that the passage through the storm had not sheared off the plane.