Shades of Starlight (Hiatus)

Chapter Eleven

"Sophie," I said without moving my lips, opening a bag of junk food and pretending to enjoy it. It tasted like sandpaper, crackling on my tongue.

"Yeah?" I looked over and saw that she had borrowed a pen and several napkins from a flight attendant and was drawing a cloudy sunset.

"Um, let's play hangman!" I told her loudly. She looked at me strangely, confused. I wrote on the napkin, making sure to angle it away from the woman sitting next to Sophie. 'The people who captured us are outside the window. They must have a Guster, because they're FLYING. Don't look.' Sophie gasped almost inaudibly.

"I'll go first," she said out loud, then scribbled back. 'What do we do??' I didn't hesitate before writing back. 'I don't know, but for now we just have to act like we're human.' Sophie looked panicked. 'But what if they crash the plane?' I hadn't thought of that. 'People have survived plane crashes before, right? If the plane starts going down, they'll know what to do.' Sophie nodded.

"I win," I announced. "The word is 'Destination'. Good game." 'What if you switch seats with a human? Then they won't see us.' Sophie's idea was a good one. I turned to the woman Sophie and I had been talking to earlier.

"Would you mind switching seats with me? This window is making me sick, and my friend doesn't like it either." I didn't Beguile her. She agreed out of the kindness of her heart, saying that she liked the view, and we switched. Hopefully our kidnappers didn't notice. Neither of us looked outside, though the woman pointed out the cities and towns as we passed over them. The obscurer our kidnappers held made it so that humans couldn't see them. But Sophie and I could.

'Now we just have to wait out the flight' I wrote. Sophie nodded, yawning.

"Sophie, you should try to sleep," I said out loud. "You look tired. 'We can sleep in shifts, and I'll wake you up if anything changes,' I promised. She sighed.

"Yeah, I am tired," Sophie muttered. I knew that she didn't want to sleep. I didn't, either. The situation was so tense, it didn't seem possible.

There were about three and a half hours left in the flight. That meant four fifty-minute shifts, or two one hundred minute shifts. I decided to just let her sleep for as long as possible. She had had a much worse reaction to the sedatives than me. Sophie needed sleep, I didn't.

I watched as she drifted off minutes later, even though she didn't want to. Bored, I sketched on the napkin like Sophie had. Keefe had taught me how to draw when I was little. We both loved it. I decided to sketch Sophie while she was sleeping. The woman sitting with us noticed and handed me a few sheets of blank white paper. I thanked her and continued with my portrait on the thick paper that didn't shred like the napkin had.

The drawing kept me busy, and I got lost in the scratching of the pencil and the beauty of the thin gray lines. An hour later, the picture I'd drawn was indistinguishable from the actual Sophie, who was still sleeping peacefully next to me. The woman in the window seat was in awe of my portrait.

"You could be a professional artist, honey," she said, offering me gum. I took it, wondering what it would taste like. Cold, spicy mint overloaded my taste buds immediately. I'd never tasted something so strong before. It wasn't bad, though, I thought, chewing thoughtfully.

I looked around the plane for anything suspicious. There was nothing, so I decided it would be okay to quickly use the bathroom. It was a strange place, and I was very surprised by how shiny clean it was. Usually anything humans touched was filthy. There was a small window in the bathroom, but I made it a point to not look out of it.

After I was done, I made my way back to my seat. A few minutes later, I was bored again. There were no strange sounds or anything coming from outside the plane, so I decided to sneak a quick peek out the window. The cloaked figures were gone. I breathed a sigh of relief and stared at my portrait, trying to figure out if there was anything missing or wrong with it.

"My son has colored pencils if you'd like some, sweetie," the woman told me. I nodded, and she took a huge pack of them from who I presumed was her son in the row behind us. Color was what was missing from my drawing. I opened the pack, breathing in the scent of the pencils. Drawing always calmed me down. I started coloring my portrait, using careful detail and blending colors together. Another hour passed. Only one and a half more to go. Maybe I could use the time to take a quick nap.

Settling into my chair and adjusting the seat belt, I tried to find the most comfortable position. I hadn't realized how tired I was until I closed my eyes. Thoughts drifted around my head, my worries trying to take this time away from me. I decided to think about Everglen, Keefe, and the Vackers, and playing base quest and bramble with them years before Sophie came to the Lost Cities. I loved Sophie as a friend, but right now memories of her were tinged with stress and worry. Before long, I was lost in a tangled thread of laughter and friendship.

BOOM. I woke with a start. How long had I been sleeping? BOOM. Sophie was muttering in her sleep. I shook her awake until she was gazing at me, wide-eyed with fear. BOOM. What was that noise? Was it our kidnappers, trying to capture us again? BOOM. The loudest sound yet exploded in the near-silence, along with the sound of crackling and sparking.

"What's happening?" Sophie yelled above the noise. I shook my head

"I don't know! Does anyone know what that was?" I shouted. Nobody responded. Then, my worst fear came to pass. The nose of the plane tilted downward, and all of a sudden, we were plummeting like a sinking stone.

I screamed at the top of my lungs. Several people joined me. The top of the plane had ripped off like it was made of aluminum foil. I looked up into the cloudless sky. Our capturers were floating above us, one of them making complicated motions with their hands and arms. A Guster. I was right. Gusters could manipulate the wind. It looked like this one was responsible for the plane nosediving.

"Sophie!" I hissed under my breath. "They're here! Don't look up!" Sophie looked like she very much wanted to see, but she didn't look up, for which I was grateful.

"What do we do?" She asked, terrified.

"I can Beguile them into stopping and landing the plane safely in Cairo," I suggested. It would mean blowing the cover we'd worked so hard to create and maintain. Sophie thought for a moment, then nodded.

"Do it. If you can raise your voice above this chaos." I was pretty sure that I could. I could be louder than Keefe when I wanted to be. Unbuckling my seat belt and standing up, I prepared myself for what I was about to do. I was going to try and Beguile an enemy Guster into bringing their targets safely to the ground. Was I powerful enough to go against their will? I guess I was about to find out.