A Shrine to an Unknown God

ARID

A SCREAM TEARS from my throat, and Marisol presses her shaking fingers to my lips.

"Shh, shh, shh, be quiet, it's okay! There's nothing to worry about! We're gonna be fine!" She's near hysterics.

Across the aisle Ezra and Dahlia shoot us a glance, though they both seem nearly as frazzled.

"What's wrong?" asks Dahlia.

"Are y'all okay?" asks Ezra.

Marisol and I are clinging to each other. She's in tears, shaking so hard I fear she might break apart. Her face is completely white. She's hyperventilating, each breath coming as a frantic gasp. And yet she's the one comforting me.

Other than never having been in a plane before, what do I have to be afraid of? Absolutely nothing. Marisol has everything to be afraid of. The last time she was in one of these strange flying chariots, it nearly killed her.

I should be the one that's comforting her.

"Marisol, take a deep breath." I brush her hair down with my fingers, trying to be as soothing as my mother was to me, when I was a child. "I won't let anything happen to you. If this plane tries to crash, I'll pull my sword on it."

A small burst of laughter bubbles forth out of her tears—not nervous laughter, but real, genuine laughter; a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day. "Please tell me you don't still have one on you."

A woman has appeared in the aisle beside us. "Girls, are you alright? We heard a scream."

Marisol waves her away, brushing away tears. "Yes, yes. We're just nervous flyers. Sorry 'bout that."

The woman nods. "Let me know if there's anything we can do to make your flight more comfortable." Then she disappears.

We spend the rest of the flight like that, clutching one another, petting each other's hair and mumbling words of comfort. When we touch down in Istanbul—Dahlia and Ezra singing the song again, though this time Marisol doesn't join them—separating myself from her feels like removing a fifth limb. I remember that my legs exist, and can move, as we gather our bags and leave the airplane.

If I didn't know any better, I would not believe that we had moved anywhere at all. The Istanbul airport looks nearly identical to the one in Athens, with the addition of many Turkish (or so I'd assume) signs. But there is something different here that I don't know how to explain—the unexplainable, the nuances. The air here lays different on my tongue. The way that the people are walking is different. The way the human chatter blends together sounds different in my ears. The very molecules that surround me rub different against my skin.

For three hours we're stuck in the Istanbul Ataturk Airport while we wait for our plane to arrive. During this time, we get food and browse the shops. Eventually we find our gate and settle in. As Marisol, Dahlia, and Ezra teach me more about pop culture, I watch the planes out the windows, and the arid land beyond.

Once the three hours are up, we get back onto the plane, which looks the same, and smells the same, and, for all intents and purposes, is the same. Marisol and I sit together again, with Dahlia and Ezra at the two window seats and us in the middle. She seems calmer as she adjusts herself, opening up the complementary blanket and wrapping it around her shoulders.

"This is gonna be a long-ass flight," she tells me. "Eleven hours. Get comfy. I'm gonna show you so many movies."

"What's a movie?"

I place the packet from my seat on my lap, running my hand over the smooth, see-through cover. I pull at it and it tears, easy and jagged. Inside there is a scratchy blue blanket like Marisol's, a small white pillow, a strange black thing, and a smaller packet made of the same material as the first—this one contains two round black blobs.