Evalyn was rarely stubborn. Where most parents would roll their eyes at their child’s requests and put the pricey biscuits back on the aisle shelf, Evalyn would happily oblige. Even Elliot had taken advantage of it hence the recent influx of household wares littering the place.

If Iris wanted to eat something, Evalyn would buy it, or ask Elliot to make it the following week. If Iris asked to do something or go somewhere within reason, she would take a day off her, as of late, empty schedule to fulfil her request.

She was flexible, but Elliot had called it ‘spoiling’, even though there was nothing rotten about it.

Yet today, Evalyn had shown off another side of her that Iris mentally categorised as ‘childish’. Apparently, she hated flying. She married a pilot but hated flying. She travelled the world but hated flying.

“I still hate it, alright!”

“Yes, I get that sweetie, but I’d rather not circumnavigate the continent or travel through a desert for three months.”

“I’m going to die.”

“Even if the chance of death was one hundred per cent, you being on the bloody thing would make that zero.”

“I’m not scared of crashing,” she said, regaining a modicum of her confidence. Elliot looked at her with five exhausting hours of irritation seared into his glare.

“Motion sickness doesn’t kill you. End of conversation.”

Grumbling. Grumbling was all she had done for the past few hours. The taxi to the city’s port, the luggage drop off, the check-in, everything. Even the sea breeze she loved to immerse herself in did nothing to lighten her mood. It only made her saltier.

They waited in the boarding queue. The line, although hundreds of passengers long, was dwarfed by the shadow of their transport. A seaplane that the airline had so affectionately named The Sparrow occupied a significant portion of the bay, rivalling cruise ships in terms of body size, and dwarfing them with its wings. A smaller Steel Whale, one that used pressurised Aether to propel itself off the sea and into the sky.

Iris partly wished she could stay at the harbour if only to see it take off.

From the moment they stepped from the boarding ramp onto the aircraft proper, the surrounding air changed. No distinct fumes of Aether, and the sea salt that had stung her nostrils had all but disappeared. She was immersed in a city, but not her city, let alone the grey that saturated Sidos.

Real marble or not, the walls reflected the colours imparted onto them by the sconce lights fixed onto regal-looking pillars with a brilliantly waxed clarity. The contrast between light and shadow made the lobby feel larger than it was, creating the illusion that this was not an aeroplane, not a transport that simply took one from A to B, but something more accommodating.

“Do all aeroplanes waste this much?” Iris asked the resident expert as he dragged the suitcase over the guiding red carpet.

“No, just these ones,” Elliot answered. “Luxury airlines kicked off with these guys, and they’ve been shuttling only the fattest of cats ever since.”

“Is Evalyn a fat cat?”

“You have no idea.”

“Don’t teach her weird stuff, for god’s sake, bigger planes just barely make it bearable,” Evalyn said, clutching her carry-on with both hands like a stuffed toy.

“It’s-” she started, before pausing.

“What?” Elliot teased.

“It’s her first time flying, I wanted to make it memorable.”

Elliot smirked, patting Iris on the head. “You hear that? She’s spoiling you again. You should say thank you when she isn’t dipping in and out of consciousness.”

They found themselves at the end of the lobby, where a small stewardess greeted them. They gave their boarding passes, and she pointed out their seats rather quickly, but Iris could not help but notice her figure.

Especially her wrists. They were thin, bordering on uncomfortable. The steward a few steps away, greeting people with gloved hands and a punctual suit, still could not hide his pronounced cheekbones. It was uncanny, but nothing concerning enough to speak up about. Perhaps it was normal. Perhaps that was how things were done in Fadaak.

Iris could not sleep. She had to force herself to blink and hold her own hands to stop them from jittering. She looked at the meal laid out in front of her.

Chicken. Sauce. Rice. Vegetables. Chicken. Sauce. Rice. Vegetables. Chicken. Sauce. Rice. Vegetables. Focus. Focus. Focus.

She needed to scream. She needed to jump out of her seat and move every muscle in her body all at once.

“Let’s get up. I need to go for a walk,” Elliot said, his own hands that of a sleeping giant’s in comparison to hers. She looked over at Evalyn, who had somehow knocked herself out. Whether she was busy digesting food or grappling with the alcohol, she was not sure. Apparently, either was better than flying.

They unbuckled their seatbelts and stood in the aisle. A long line of repeating seats and continuous patterns both preceded and proceeded them, like a hall of mirrors reflecting into each other.

“Let’s try this way,” Elliot said as he ushered Iris forward, following the direction of the seats. As she walked, her feverish energy began to be put towards something practical, thus easing her nerves.

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“I think you might be going through Aether Influx. Most Spirits do when they’re near powerful Aether engines.”

“Does that mean too much Aether? I can guess because the words put together suggest that.”

“Very good observation. Personnel on the Steel Whale are trained for it since the engines are so powerful and use so much Aether, but standing near such engines or drinking pure Aether can overload a Spirit.”

Iris had forgotten she was a Spirit, or rather had pushed it out of her mind. When she felt her skin against the palm of her hands, she could convince herself she was human, and for now, that was good enough.

Knowing that her own flesh betrayed that idea irked her. As much as she had relied on its power in the past, it had welcomed her newfound self-awareness with hostility and a campaign of torturous harassment.

“It’s something that happens to every Spirit. Even Evalyn gets the shakes.”

“Evalyn does?”

“Yeah, she does. Perhaps not as bad as you do, since it’s apparently preferable to motion sickness, but anything that uses powerful magic needs it. They pull in enough aether, and in doing so, get jittery. Almost like adrenaline. A fight or flight reaction…Let’s see where this goes.”

He picked up Iris by the field jacket still around her waist and swung her left, where a small break in the seating rows lead to a staircase, wide enough for a single person. Staff only, it read.

They willed their footsteps soft as the marble staircase continued down in a spiral, mimicking the spires of old torchlit centuries, long insignificant.

“How do you know so much about Spirits?”

“I used to kill them.”

Iris hesitated, and Elliot noticed the lack of small, whispering footsteps behind him. He turned and rolled up the white sleeves of his button-up. He extended a hand, offering consolation.

“Used to. Keywords.”

She took his hand, and they continued for another circle. The treasure at the bottom of the spire came into view, as they looked over what had ought to be a ballroom. They were at one of many entrances to a seldom-used catwalk, running invisibly along the edges of the surreal space.

“Are we still flying?” Iris asked.

“Luxury is luxury. Wouldn’t be worth much if not for a ballroom.”

They sat down on the stairs, Elliot behind Iris as they looked downwards, observing colourful figures flutter like bees, birds and butterflies from one black or white dot to the other, all in a loose harmony that did away with any sort of tradition and opted for a purer approach to fun.

“I met your mother at an event like this.”

“What was she wearing?”

“Bright red dress. It went well with her hair.”

“I want to see her wear that. Does she still have it?”

“I don’t know. Her body’s changed a little since she was eighteen.”

They simmered for a moment, letting the nearby silence pass. The view below them became a diorama, a distant depiction of life. A what if. She felt his presence behind her, but perhaps greater was what she wanted to ask him.

“First air force, 5th fighter wing, White Devils. When it came to putting Spirits down, we were the best they had. I finished training at what…sixteen? By the time I was twenty, I had already been assigned to a squadron and was well on my way. Then I met Evalyn.”

“What was she like?”

“She was small. A small girl with a desperate need to prove to herself that she didn’t need her family anymore.”

A weak Evalyn was something Iris struggled to grasp. Imagining her as anything asides from an all-encompassing dynamism was not easy, yet for him, it was as real as a vivid memory, wearing a sparkling red dress.

“What were you like? Elly?”

“Pfft. Someone who grew up too fast. In all eighteen years of Evalyn’s life to that point, she had barely ever stepped outside the walls of her life. In just twenty of mine, I had traded in any semblance of a childhood.”

“Why?”

“Because I was better than everyone else. I thought that justified all of it.”

Iris could see a longing in his eyes. A deep haze of insecure, brownish purple. The same colour as when she was put to the test, when she couldn’t trust the hand that passed over her own skin anymore.

If she could be wrong about herself, then by god she wished she could at least be confident in that mistake. Perhaps he was the same.

“Evalyn told me about her father that night. She told me about how the battle was not going to be won through extermination, that I was wasting the lives of many I could possibly save if I helped her. Helped her prevent war from being brought onto Geverde. And well…you know how that turned out.”

“You defected?”

“Yeah. Yeah, we did.”

She turned back to the ballroom. A blissful ignorance shielded it from them. A barrier that Iris could begin to see forming all around them. Perhaps she had it the wrong way around. The music, the cocktails, the dance floor was the real world, and people like her guardians were working backstage to keep the party going, only to see the waiter drop a glass, or hear a musician blunder a note as soon as they failed to pull those strings correctly.

She could almost see a scruffy man in a lazy black suit get pulled onto the sidelines by a young woman in a red dress. Come see what’s out here. See what the world is really like.

Then what of the plane engines? The mechanics working tirelessly to keep the bubble afloat, high in the sky. Was that the real world? How many layers deep were they? How many more until she could finally make up her mind on it? On how horrible or how wonderful it could be.

The woman in red gave the man a kiss, sealing both their fates. They were never going back, never stepping foot on the dance floor again.

What did that say about Iris? Had she ever even found herself near that polished wood surface?

She felt a hand caress her cheek. A calloused hand playfully ordered it around like a child with cookie dough.

“Most people aren’t meant to change the world, and others are. I used to think I was, but now I know that my role is smaller…”

The sentence went unfinished. He was not upset with that revelation; Iris knew that much. He was not so vain to assume so highly of himself, but the true nature of that utterance escaped her, not even forming its own existence.

“Which one do you think I’ll be?” Iris asked.

“You choose,” Elliot said. “It’s up to you…I promise. I promise, okay?”

Right under them was the Northern Chain Ridge. Jutting, trampling over one another and reaching for the underbelly of their plane. The great formation protruded from the ground too abruptly, slicing the entire continent in half, reminding all of the absolute power nature held over absolutely everything.

“Do you remember a ride or a range in your dreams? The Karaxian mountains are a range of many mountains, the ridge is a long line of large ones.”

She thought back to the memory, only daring to peek through the keyhole.

Grey rock. Ice-cold white. Nary a speck of green for miles. The mountains were high, indomitable.

And the sharp drop-off. That leap into green death.

“It was these mountains. I’m sure of it.”

“You’re sure?”

“I don’t remember a range of mountains. It was more like a wall, with a steep drop off on one side.”

“What was on the other side?”

The plane continued unrelenting, like the passage of time, and similarly brought with it new revelations.

Sand. Waves of sand. A sea of green was made with blades of life, not grains of rock. She had hoped there would be what she was looking for, somewhere in between the mountains and the desert. But the same drop-off that had promised a comfortable resting place for those so unfortunate to tumble, instead greeted ill-fated climbers with desert. A hot grave for one to disintegrate into.

Unbearably hot. Unbearably vast. Unbearably barren.

Even if the hostages were being forced to, Iris could not imagine them living in a place like this, let alone being alive at all.

“It’s wrong,” she finally said, “the mountains are the same, but there was no desert. It was supposed to be fields…and a city.”

“A city?”

“I don’t know if it was a city…”

“Memories can be faulty like that. Makes you wonder if there’s much to yourself that science can determine, huh.”

In a way, she was glad.

If memories made someone who they were, then maybe she could feel comfortable in her skin. For just a bit longer.