Any minute now, the plane should be descending.
Takeoff was scheduled for six in the morning. It was already 7:30 AM when the plane left the runway. Not that Brett was surprised. Airlines here in the Philippines were always late, and she took that into account when she made her itinerary.
Space. There must always be space between events and appointments. She liked making her schedules breathe; it brought a bit of spirit, a bit of color to her day.
The flight was slated to be three and a half hours long. It was now 11:14 AM. Not that Brett was surprised.
Space. Good thing she had space. At least for a bit, she could breathe.
She closed the small notebook Pebu Capific gave her as complements for the flight, slowly so the fresh ink marks didn’t smudge on both sides of the pages. She’d been writing about her latest story: a stray meteor crashing on a small suburban town, drastically changing everyone’s lives. But she couldn’t quite get the pictures on her head to the paper, so she let the idea linger there. And it lingered. And it lingered some more, until it left her completely.
She sighed. Her imagination breathed too, maybe a little bit too much. Maybe she needed some space. Literal space. Brett reclined her chair.
“Hey!” Someone kicked her seat. Was that a baby? It sounded like a baby. Brett turned.
Short, white hair. Wrinkled cheeks. Hunched back. Thickly rimmed square glasses. Clearly not a baby. “Sorry,” Brett said, un-reclining her chair.
Space. When Brett was a kid, she imagined planes to go as high as outer space, where the blue of the sky turned black, and the stars shined brighter. She loved space—the idea of it (she’s never actually been there, of course). It always baffled her how some people could be so afraid of it, like her sister, who, weirdly enough, was afraid of so many other things, like mayonnaise. And her father, who, weirdly enough, was an astronaut.
Brett chuckled, and the old woman on the seat next to her gave her a side-eye. She was with her husband, who sat in the aisle seat. Am I in a seniors-only flight? She hoped the pilot wasn’t old too, that’d be tragic.
The flight attendant went up to their row and asked if they needed anything. Brett, in fact, wanted a bottle of water, but the old woman told the attendant they were fine, and she went on her way. No water for Brett. Tragic.
Space. That’s what she needed between her and the elderly couple.
The oval window beside her looked eerily tempting to jump off of. The morning light drifted through it like a translucent cloak made of bright fog, and the clouds…the clouds. It was like God decided to make white cotton candies, pumping them up with helium for good measure.
Brett sighed. She didn’t just need space. She needed time too. She barely had any, these days. Always rushing to create one document to the next. From the time she woke up to now was the longest stretch of hours she was able to muster in a year without creating a single instructive brief (which she then passed on to her artists, bless their souls).
She wondered if they were doing okay—the artists, not the briefs. They probably needed a break too.
The outside sky was bright but not hot, and certainly not unwelcome. Brett sat there, eyes lazily meandering from one cloud bump to the next. That one looks like a hill, she thought. That one’s flat. That one’s spherical. That one looks like an oddly shaped dog balloon. That one looks like Joe Keery’s head. That one’s a…wait.
At first, Brett thought it was an insect, but insects didn’t fly this high, and certainly not at this speed. The fastest flying insect flew at about 56 kph. The dragonfly. She got that nugget of information from some wayward podcast. Planes went way faster than dragonfly speeds and go full dragon-like at 800 kph or more. That comparison didn’t exactly make for a contest.
And that particular piece of knowledge about dragonfly speeds was not something Brett expected to think of on a random flight to Singalonganesia. But she had, so she thought to herself that maybe she should listen to more wayward podcasts.
And that… whatever she was looking at, wasn’t an insect.
Between two thin clouds, a small creature with slender wings fluttered about. Tiny sparkles came with each flap. It was looking at Brett, she was sure. It had eyes. It was humanoid.
It flew about in jerking directions. Was it a pixie? She’d only seen pixies in books, shows, and movies. All of them fictional; all of them fake.
Was it a pixie or a fairy? Not that Brett would know the difference of the two. One thing was for sure though, it wasn’t fictional; it wasn’t fake.
The fairy came closer, seemingly unafraid, and definitely unbothered by the whipping winds outside the plane. It glided closer and closer until it didn’t move. The plane stopped moving too. The engine had fallen asleep, and the clouds grew still and stoic.
But they were still flying…floating? Suspended in mid-air, more like, as if strings pulled at the airplane from all directions. The feeling made her remember the times she’d float face down on the swimming pool water like a stray starfish. But now it was a stray plane, and planes are exponentially larger than starfish. That comparison didn’t exactly make for a contest.
Brett looked around to search for the flight attendant, and she was just there, standing. She smiled, continuing to ask the passengers for their order like nothing was happening. None of the passengers seemed to mind either. It was like they were in a trance.
The fairy drew closer to the window, until it was inches away from the panel. She was wearing something between what must have been a dress and what could have been leaves. She had plump cheeks. She had a cheeky look on her face, too, so Brett had a hard time focusing on anything else. The fairy hovered by the window.
Then she flashed a large smile and snapped her fingers. Sparkles fizzed around her, and the plane dropped.
The clouds and the sky whizzed past, and Brett’s stomach felt like if there was a massive cavern at the center of the earth, and that same cavern imploding. She grabbed on to the seat in front of her, nails digging on the cushion. The scariest two seconds of her life.
The plane stopped, and started to, slowly but surely, descend. It fell gently, straightforwardly with its belly down. Brett peeked outside to see the plane surrounded by gold and white sparkles. And there, floating by her, the fairy laughed. Brett hadn’t noticed she had her mouth open.
The plane bobbed when it landed, which led Brett into thinking they were somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, which wasn’t saying much considering that “the middle of the Pacific” was larger than the Earth’s entire landmass. The emergency exits were open, but no one wanted to go out. The passengers all stayed in their seats, chatting, eating, coughing (in the case of the old lady beside her). Brett made her way to the front exit.
It was near noon, if not noon already, and the heat made that clear. The sun painted the ocean in a blinding white, but Brett’s eyes adjusted soon enough.
It was hard not to notice the inflatable slide that led straight to the ocean, floating on the water’s surface. It reminded her of the slides that detailed the inflatable castles, a trademark staple during school fairs back in the day. Back in the day, the thought of her thinking back in the day sent shivers down her spine. Maybe I am in a seniors-only flight.
“Come on, slide on it!” The fairy flew in front of her. “Don’t be afraid.”
The fairy was no more the size of Brett’s palm, and the thought of a fairy’s anatomy made her head spin. She had a bunch of questions she wanted to ask, but for some reason, the words that left Brett’s mouth were: “But I’ll get wet.”
“No you won’t!” The fairy pursed her lips, rubbing her hands together. When she opened her arms, small golden glitter spread to cover the surface of the ocean. Long veins with the color and radiance of the sun, unveiled their way towards the far horizon. And just like that, the ocean calmed. “You can slide now.”
Brett did it without thinking. She slid, her feet landing directly on the surface of the water. She did not get wet. The ocean did not move. It felt like soft ground—or hard water. No waves coursed through the ocean’s face, but the gold veins that ran through its surface pulsed tepidly in no discernable rhythm. “What’s going on?” She faced the fairy. “Who are you?”
“Who am I?” She fluttered around in loops. “We don’t really have names like you do, Brett!”
“How do you know who I am?”
The fairy smiled. “Come with me.” She flew over one of the gold trails and Brett followed. The trail diverged and branched into an infinite number of directions Brett could no longer see the end of. It was like the root system of an ancient, long-forgotten tree. Some trails were slim and narrow, some were wide and rigid.
There were crossroads here and there, but the fairy never hesitated, always knowing where to go. Brett wondered what would happen if she dove into the ocean. Would it feel like soft ground or hard water? Or just regular old water?
Space. There was a lot of space here. She took a deep breath and liked it, and she thought to herself why she didn’t take more deep breaths, loosely remembering that she lived in Metro Manila, not a great place for breaths (or anything for that matter). She wondered why she stayed there and couldn’t come up with a decent answer.
The other trails seemed farther and farther away now the farther forward they went. From afar, the gold trails to the east and west looked like shimmering roads, avenues, paths. And all paths led back to the plane, Brett saw.
The plane served like a hub, the nerve center of the massive, interconnected system. The trails pulsed with light, and each pulse originated from the plane.
The fairy stopped in no place special. She faced Brett. “I can grant you one wish! But you have to be sure and certain of what you’ll wish from me, because one chance is all you’re going to get.”
“Wish?” Brett asked. “What kind of wish?”
“Any kind! But there’s only one rule.”
“And what’s that?”
The fairy smiled. “It has to be the first wish you think of!”
Space. I’ve always wanted to go to space.
“Granted!”
“But no! Wait—wait!” That was a horrible wish. World peace was on the table. Ending world hunger. Declamping the maniacal grip capitalism has on the world. Brett could think of a hundred more things that would have been better, but it was too late.
The fairy soared up the air, to the sky, to the clouds, until she was gone. For a few seconds, Brett was standing alone in the middle of a completely silent ocean.
I could have wished for stable internet, even.
Then the fairy came back down. “What are you waiting for? Come! Let’s go!”
“How will I—”
The fairy pouted. “Just fly, Brett! It’s simple really. Just think that you’re flying and then you’ll fly.”
“And then I’ll what?” But as she said that, the thought of flying crossed her mind and sparkles started to appear from the ends of her limbs. She was flying. Her stomach clenched at the thought of it, but the ocean was now five feet below her own feet, now ten feet, now fifteen, and she was flying. And she forgot all thoughts of stable internet and capitalism. “W-what.”
The fairy raised her eyebrows. “Let’s go!” She darted up and away. Brett followed, wondering where the fairy was leading her to. She knew exactly where.
Space. They were going for space.
The fairy looked like a small white dot that bounded energetically overhead. It was all the effort Brett could muster to keep track of the fairy.
Brett rose farther from the ground. Fifty feet now, now sixty. Now seventy. She rose in a faster and faster rate, accelerating. Each thought of flying and flying faster and higher made her rise more quickly. She was inside the clouds now. They were, in fact, not pumped up with helium. Clouds were hollow inside. Brett’s known that since she was a child—since she started reading about clouds and the sky and the moon and the stars and the planets in the solar system. Clouds weren’t edible too, but they looked like they were, and it was a crime they weren’t.
She glided through the clouds. She couldn’t see the fairy anymore, but it mattered little.
Space. The only way to go was up, and up she went.
Brett once came across an interesting question she found online. Where does the sky end and space begin? Drawing boundaries, finding limitations, humans can’t live without that. We’re addicted to boundaries, so of course we should have boundaries to define our world, our earth. It was a weird question of course, partially scientific, partially philosophical. Brett saw it like defining colors in a spectrum. You can clearly see where one color is, but where does one color end. Like, where does green end and yellow begin? Depends on the person looking, she guessed.
The Karman Line was the answer Brett found. The scientific answer. Space started at the Karman Line. The Earth ended at the Karman Line. Sixty-two miles from the surface.
The clouds were well beneath her now. The skies were blue, still blue, but not for long. The boundary was nearing, where the heavens turned from blue to black. Space. That was where space was.
The fairy met her there, at the inflection point where the sky opened. Where the world turned silent and vast and grand. Brett hovered noiselessly, hands to either side of herself. Eyes overwhelmed, utterly overwhelmed. No words would be tantamount to explain the sight. No phrase would be proper. No sentence could hope to encapsulate the sheer brilliance of what she saw.
And she saw it, why people were afraid of this place. The stars seemed far, infinitely far. They glimmered gloriously, but mournfully. The stars are dead, a stray thought. Light was the fastest thing in the universe, but even it had limits. And stars had lifespans, like humans, or anything else that lived. By the time a star’s light reached the Earth for humans to see, most likely the star was dead if not dying. What we saw in the sky were skeletons, remnants, memories.
The sun burned bright though, bright yet far, though not nearly as far as the other stars. It posed bravely against the vast darkness, which made Brett wonder how, for so long, the sun could withstand being alone.
She lifted her hand, grasping at the sun, coiling her fingers around its corona.
The fairy cleared her throat. “You like it?” She smiled.
Brett put her hand down. “This… this is nothing like the pictures. I mean… it looks the same, but it’s not. It’s far from it. So far.”
“I’m glad you find it that way,” the fairy said. “But I can’t have you here for long! Five minutes, is that okay?”
She asked that with a question-like tone, but Brett knew it wasn’t a matter of her saying yes or no. She had five minutes. That was all she had.
Brett took a full breath, knowing full well that breathing was not something someone could do in outer space. But she was able to. A handful of golden sparkles sprung from her mouth and nostrils.
Space. It’s wide, incomprehensibly so. Deep, daunting, and frighteningly dreadful. The distance between the stars were bottomless valleys. The distance between galaxies, boundless oceans of isolation.
But that wasn’t all space was about. Brett loved space not because it was scary, even though it was, and she understood that more now that she was here. She loved it because it was proof of something. Of great potential. Of endless possibilities. No one knew what lay beyond the great expansive unknown, but that was the wonder of it. The unknown was proof of greater discovery. Of never-ending pursuits. Of freedom.
Space. It was everything. It was the before, the beyond, and the in-between. It wasn’t cold or warm, it just was. Brett could stay here forever.
When her five minutes were done, the fairy clasped her hands together and asked, “are you ready to go back down?”
Brett wanted to say no, how could she be? Why would she be? The Earth rested beneath her feet like a sleeping giant, a blast of color on a canvas of black. But its color held no meaning, no substance. The Earth was proof of nothing but pointless struggle, brutal inequality, and eternal consumption. That was not her home. Her home was here, where anything was possible. So when Brett nodded, it felt like an iron hand gripped her stomach and tied it to a burning knot. A burning knot that somehow felt cold, and lonely.
They descended.
They landed on the same spot they flew from—no place special. The fairy led the way back. The gold veins above the ocean pulsed, still.
“Why?” Brett asked. “What was this for? Why now? Why here?”
The fairy stopped. She turned. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know much, Brett,” she said. “But I’ll tell you this! We understand life like we understand the universe. We see a lot of it but know little.
“Our lives are like strands, see? Strings. Each life weaved into another, either purposely or aimless, destiny or otherwise, all searching for their way around the world. And sometimes these strings curl; they move and maneuver and part! Like roads bending to climb the height of mountains, our lives bend for the things and people we love and care about, and also the things and people that make us struggle and… suffer, even. There are moments, situations that happen that define the course of our lives. Critical moments—”
“Crossroads.” Brett bent down and touched the trail. It felt like soft ground—or hard water. It pulsed with light. “You’re telling me I’m facing a critical moment now?”
The fairy smirked. “I’m telling you; you faced a critical moment! You never know when they’re gonna come, after all! And most of the time, you’d never know they already happened.”
“But what’s mine? What’s—”
“Op op op!” The fairy held a finger to Brett’s face. “Nope, no more questions. We’re well past five minutes, and I’m already late as it is.” She exhaled, putting her middle finger and thumb together. “Well, that was fun!”
“Wait, wait—!”
The fairy snapped her fingers, and the world went white.
Brett found herself back on her plane seat. The old woman eyed her weirdly, like she’d just seen a ghost. Maybe she was a ghost; she certainly felt like one, or like a ghost had passed through her and messed her brain neurons up. It felt like she was forgetting something, something important, and she couldn’t pinpoint exactly what, or why.
Space. She needed some space. She knew that much…but…but not as much as before.
The flight attendant walked to their row. “Does anyone want anything from the cart?” She flashed a doll-like smile. The old woman beside Brett waved her off.
But no, that wasn’t right. She wanted something. What was it? Something about—her throat clicked dry. “Water!”
The flight attendant looked at Brett, her brows curling for a breath of a second, before reaching into the cart to grab a bottle of water. “That’d be two-hundred fifty pesos.” Jeez.
When the plane landed, Brett ran over to the nearest bathroom, empty water bottle in hand. Her luggage could wait. After finishing her business in the stall, wondering the whole time why the bathroom reeked disproportionately of piss and other things she would rather not think about, she went over to the sink. It was beside the urinals. The urinals. The urinals.
She backed up out to the airport hallway, sneakily so no one would see and mistake her for a pervert.
“Aren’t you a pervert.” The guy wore a red shirt. He was a little bit taller than Brett, of about the same age as her if not younger. A considerable helping of letters piled over his arms, covering his stomach-to-chest area.
“I’m not.” She stiffed her lips.
“Sure you’re not.” The guy grinned. “And that’s why you weren’t just casually sneaking out of the men’s bathroom, naturally lifting your feet ever so slightly so that the squeaking of your rubber shoes couldn’t be heard. Of course, of course.”
She would have liked to punch him. She would have liked that very much. But instead of punching, she turned a fist to a pointed finger and said, “No!” The letters flew out of the guy’s arms. “Oh…sorry about that.”
The guy stared at her for a while. “No. No it’s fine.” He bent down to pick the letters up. “I really did want to scatter the letters across the floor like this. I do it regularly, often really, all the time.”
Brett chuckled and bent down too to help him. “Do you ever stop?”
“Being on the floor?”
“No,” said Brett. “Being a sarcastic dickwad.”
The guy held a blank face. “Sadly, it’s what I am. Besides, I’d rather be a sarcastic dickwad than a pretty girl.”
“Huh?”
“Oh...” He hesitated. “I meant pervert.”
They gathered the letters from the ground mostly in silence. The guy gave his name, though: Charcuterie. Brett was pretty sure he was kidding, so she decided to call him Terry instead. “I should probably get my luggage,” Brett said.
“You have luggage? I thought you lived here.”
“Terry, wouldn’t you be able to recognize your neighbors?”
He smiled. “I thought I did. I better go, then.”
“You need help?” she asked, not knowing exactly why she’d offered.
He seemed puzzled by it too. “Uhh, sure.”
Brett took half of the pile, so neither one of them carried more than was inappropriately attention-grabbing. “But I should probably get my luggage first.”
Terry agreed, and they walked to the luggage claiming area. “What do we even do with these letters?” he asked.
“I don’t know with you. You’re the one who has them.”
“I know, but…” He closed his eyes then shook his head. “I’m just feeling a little dizzy is all. I feel like a ghost. Does that make sense?”
She went on to get her luggage from the baggage belt, and they both made their way to an office somewhere near the airport’s exit. They dumped the letters on an empty desk there.
“Thanks for helping me.”
Brett shrugged. “Don’t ask me why, I don’t know either.” She had to leave. She’d let her schedule breathe for too long it’d burst for having too much air. So they went out of the airport to try and get a cab.
When they were able to flag one down, Terry helped load the luggage to the trunk of the car. “Is this goodbye?” he asked.
She had one foot in the taxi. “Don’t you have more letters to deliver?”
“You know, I don’t know.” He scratched the back of his neck and shuffled his feet, before tripping lightly on the curb.
“That’s what you get.”
“For what?”
Brett rolled her eyes. “For calling me a pervert.”
“Oh.” He didn’t hesitate. “I meant pretty.”
“Sure.” Brett stepped inside the cab, sat down, and closed the door. But Terry was persistent, he knocked on the window, to the mild annoyance of the cab driver. Brett rolled the window down. “What do you want?”
“I actually do have one more letter to deliver.” He handed her a slightly creased letter. It looked like all the other letters he had before. “Bye.” Terry walked away.
A few minutes away from the airport, Brett ripped the letter open. Inside was a piece of paper with nothing but a single line, a phrase more so…a username. “@carcuterie_space”. Was Space his actual last name? That couldn’t be, right? At this point, she had given up on trying to understand the man.
Brett opened his Instagram account. His account was public, and the first picture was of a wooden board with cheese of different kinds. Some of them looked meltingly good. Some of them looked bluish nasty. His caption was a one-liner, “bored.”
He had posted a story too. It was just a picture, one picture—letters scattered on the ground. There was a small lump of text on the upper right of the screen that said, “just got my letters dropped by the prettiest girl i ever seen.”
That made her laugh. Space. He’s something else.
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