Poetica Mundi

Chapter 8

Chapter 8 - Plane

I boarded the plane and was escorted to my seat. First class. Nice. I sat down and got comfortable when it occurred to me that I didn't know how long the flight was or even where exactly we were going. An air hostess was walking up the aisle so I caught her attention. 

"Excuse me." I said "Can you tell me about this journey?" 

"It's an 11 hour British Airways flight to Seattle. I believe you're travelling with Make A Wish Foundation. It's a direct flight so it's convenient for you," She said, looking confused. I did just ask her a pretty stupid question. 11 hours. AH CRAP! Oh well, it could be worse. I had never been on a journey like that before though.

"Okay thank you." I sighed. 

"If there's anything else you need then just ask. And we'll keep an extra special eye on you, given your circumstance. Don't worry though, you're in good hands." She spoke in a clear, crisp British accent and wore a vibrant smile. Then she walked away, her heels clapping against the floor. 

I lay my head against the window and closed my eyes. I imagined the Cullen family in Forks and their warm welcome when I arrived. I imagined Gus and Hazel on their plane back to Indiana. I remembered the sight of them crying on the bench back in Amsterdam. I wondered what was going on. I hope everything's alright. Well obviously everything's not alright. I felt a twang of sadness and decided to brush off the thought. So instead, I imagined the clouds taking me away from these lives that we all live - ridiculed with pain and sorrow. I imagined myself floating up, out of this body, into the sky...way up...beyond the clouds...and let myself drift into a deep sleep. 

I woke to an earthquake. The whole plane was shaking uncontrollably, and there was a horrible wailing noise coming from the cockpit. A rush of panic shot through my body, waking me up instantly and jerking my body upright. I looked out of the window. Pitch black. I had been asleep for about an hour. The passengers around me seemed to be reasonably calm, so I decided to do the same. It's probably nothing. The seat belt sign flashed on with a ding and the pilot announced that there was some turbulence, so we needed to remain seated. 

I am a very nervous flyer. My mum has always held me and sung to me whenever there was turbulence on a plane to calm me. I suddenly had an overwhelming longing for my mum. I hadn't even really thought about her, but now I felt homesick. All I wanted was to be home. With my parents. In my house. As much as I was loving this trip - I didn't think about how hard it would be to be away from home for so long. And I was on my own. I was all alone with people I didn't know. In a far away land that I didn't know. 

Tears began to flood my eyes but I pushed them away. I could not cry. I had to be brave. It was just a bit of turbulence and I was going to be fine. 

For the next ten minutes, the plane jolted and rumbled. I plugged in my earphones and began flicking through the selection of films on the screen in front of me. Except, I didn't know any of these films. I suddenly realized that I was in a fictional land, so obviously the films wouldn't be the stories of the people in Poetica Mundi. Instead, these films were the stories of people on normal Earth, that I know. I decided of a film called The Tales Of Alice Raymond. It was a chick-flick about a teenage girl who fell in love with a hot boy, but she was way too out of his league to be with him. Typical. Alice Raymond was a real girl. On normal Earth. And she has no idea that in a parallel universe, her life was a film. I wonder if my life is a film here. Probably not. And that means that our favourite characters could know us! They could be reading the book of our lives! And shipping us with people! They could be obsessed with us like we are with them!