“Alright Captain,” Seela calls to me, “where are we going?”

I’m still in disbelief. A girl this gorgeous is carrying me in a basket, and calling me Captain. All because she tried to kill me. Near-death results in incredible things.

“Um,” I climb up the rope to look around.

Below us, is Seela’s home planet. Arbnia is nowhere in sight, meaning the planet must’ve moved quite a bit since I landed there. Wait, that means- yep, that little red dot in the sky that I was going to check out next is gone as well.

Oh well.

“Let’s go that way,” I point in a random direction. Nothing is over there.

“Why that way?” Seela looks down at me.

She looks so amazing with the aether flowing through her hair.

“I don’t know, gut feeling.”

Seela smiles, and the aether surrounding her face solidifies from her forceful, yet sweet, laughter.

“Whatever you say, Cap.”

My heart flutters.

She starts in that direction.

Seela also seems a lot more relaxed. I think the tree was an even bigger burden on her than Virdy. Has Seela ever even socialized with anyone she wasn’t trying to kill? I’m excited to see the person she becomes.

After a while, Seela starts to slow down. There are still no planets in sight. Or plants or animals, for that matter.

“Hey,” Seela says, “do you think everything will be ok if I just stop and take a quick nap in there?”

I think for a second.

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I mean, there’s no reason I can think of not to. Worst case scenario, we get off course, which assumes we have a course, which we do not.

“I don’t see why not,” I shout back.

She hops off of the handle, and inside the basket. I already feel the basket drifting off. Clawing at the ground a bit, she somehow manages the perch on the ground and lean against the wall.

“I just need to rest a bit… so much flying,” she huffs out.

Watching her curl up as her eyes fall shut pulls a yawn from my mouth. I don’t think to close the tapestry, because we are completely alone. Leaning against the opposite wall to her, I drift off as well.

~~~

A violent jerk of the basket shakes me awake, in a panic. My eyes snap open, in time to watch Seela do the same. We both open our mouths to speak, but before anything comes out, the basket jerks again, and we’re both on the ground.

“What’s going on!?” I shout. I notice now that the aether outside the basket is howling.

“It feels like some kind of storm!” Seela shouts back, talons tightly holding on to the ground.

“Why is there a storm!?” I shout over the aether… winds? Waves? Can storms even happen out here?

“I don’t know, but something like that’s going on!”

Before I can say anything back to her, I’m thrown again. Luckily, the rope was within arm’s reach, so I grabbed it. If it hadn’t been, I would’ve been thrown out of the basket. Instead, I’m holding onto this rope for dear life, whipped around by the whimsy of the wild aether.

This isn’t like a storm on a planet, where the wind pushes you around and everything simply moves with it. The energy of the storm moves through the aether, which solidifies. It’s like being hit by giant boulders that you can’t see or touch.

“I’ll try to get us out of here!” says Seela.

She jumps out of the basket, and quickly grabs onto the handle. Spreading her wings and leaning forward, she glides over, under, and along the gusts, taking the basket and me along with her.

“Keep holding on!” she yells, as if there’s absolutely anything else I could do right now.

I tighten my grip on the rope.

“It’s about to get worse, so brace yourself!” she yells again.

Worse!?

I do as she says and brace myself. Sure enough, I’m being jerked around even harder. I once heard someone say that they were between a rock and a hard place. I don’t know what they meant by that, but I certainly feel like I am between two hard places, slamming full-force into both.

“This is going to suck! Don’t let up!” Seela yells one more time, “We’re almost there!”

Whipping turns into sucking as we are now being violently pulled by something. This sensation is familiar. Horribly familiar. It’s an even worse version of when I landed on Arbnia. Even faster, even more intense, and I’m even less in control. All I can do at this point is hang on with everything I have, close my eyes, and listen for Seela’s instruction.

The pulling seems to stop, but the motion doesn’t, as aether turns to wind. I guess we must be landing somewhere? I’m still being whipped around, but no longer between two hard places, which feels like an improvement.

“Prepare for impact!” Seela screeches.

Impact?

I take a deep breath in, and brace myself.

And then-

Whap!

There it is. The rock.