Turbulence | 𝙰 𝚂𝚑𝚘𝚛𝚝 𝚂𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚢 ✔

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Inside the plane, I keep my legs tied together. Ankles pressing, knees touching. My current read is spread open on my lap—a piece of historical fiction set in a period when the world was still using labels to identify sexualities. Now, any attempt to classify people on the basis of who they get intimate with can get you penalised. Thank you, Mom, for timing my entry right.

When he appears, his head slightly lowered to keep it from bumping into the plane's ceiling, I don't look up. The battlefield is—always has been—empty, and with only the air to slash at, I feel like a fool now. The sword is dropped. Royu Snowdrop sits down beside me. Fool, I tell myself, go back home. My hands, without a weapon to strike, my head, without the will to fight, are all drained—of purpose and meaning and feeling.

The only thing I can do right now—read my book.

It tells the story of a boy who falls in love with a boy. They wrestle each other on wet soil after rainy days, share a bottle of chilled orange juice on summer days, hide under a cherry blossom tree on spring days, and on the first day of winter, get dragged into two different correctional facilities—all because they're labelled, and they're labelled "wrong".

Royu Snowdrop's forearm is on the armrest now, pressing against mine.

Those two boys—had they been here, no one would've stopped them from living through four seasons each year. Nothing...would've stopped him.

A tiny flame begins to dance; it asks me to push back, fight for the armrest, feel more of his dry, warm skin. I snuff it out at once. Royu Snowdrop is now the owner of this territory. And Felix Thistle keeps his tail folded.

When he leans over my lap to pull the window shade up, I hold my breath. The second time, he yanks it down. Next, up. After that, down. Again and again, he burrows his way into my personal space, smelling of wood. Wood. The spark in me is aching to be fed, to grow into something that is fierce and lively—a campfire—yet, I, again and again, let it die. No wood for you.

At one point, Royu Snowdrop stops (bending over my lap and-) messing with the window. By the time he's done, I almost forget my resolve to keep sulking about our one-sided fight—and almost thwack his head with my book.

When the plane takes off, I shut my eyes tight. There's a monstrous roar that I'm afraid will abruptly stop, for whatever reason, plunging us into sudden silence and to the ground below. Lonelier, more painful, thoughts—like going off to college, leaving my town behind, never again finding an enemy—cram my head, not making things any easier. I wince.

Then we're at a considerable height, moving through air horizontally, and I feel my shoulders melt. He is beside me, but I make no move to bother him. I don't take one look.

It doesn't seem all that impossible, I think, to make it through a ninety-minute journey without establishing any form of contact with Royu Snowdrop—no small talk, no trash talk, none of that you-wait-I'll-beat-your-ass-in-the-next-exam talk I used to do a lot in the tenth grade.

So here I am, committing to my vow of silence, when it happens.

My book falls.

The plane drops.

My heart rises.

And I gasp—breaking with my own mouth, the silence I'd so painstakingly built between us. 

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