Illusions II: The Adventures of a Reluctant Student (Illusions 2)

“I don’t remember the crash. Some said it should have killed me, except for what you did in the last two seconds.”

“I did the best I could, Richard. I’m fine. Indestructible.”

There she was, the image of her perfect form, perched high in the hangar, atop an engine traveler. The chain of the mortal world passing through her fuselage, no damage, of course. What a beautiful symbol for her, not a single scratch on her colors.

“I’m glad it worked. I liked having a body. This sense of danger, though, I’m not sure I liked thinking my life depended on such a delicate body, frail, here on Earth. Winds, collision, the wires. Yet there’s a reason for that.” Was she smiling? “I don’t know what it is, but there’s a reason.”

What a thought. If we’re spirits, indestructible, why do we bother with bodies?

“We don’t have bodies, Puff. We imagine them, for the fun, for the stories, for the drama. You did, too. Your story was that you would die to protect your pilot in a crash on Earth.”

A long quiet time. Her voice soft, in the silence, “I did my best. Better me than you. My wing took a lot of the impact.” She was quiet for a minute, reliving. “You’re done flying, too?”

“Not likely! I’ve flown most of this lifetime, and maybe on Earth it may take time, a bit, but I’ll fly again. A few months, maybe. If I don’t do it, I’ll die, Puff. No point living here, if I can’t fly.”

She was no reason for the crash. It was not a problem for her. It was for me, not seeing the wires, and somehow needing a challenge to live.

“I’m sorry, Puff. My fault. I didn’t see the wires.”

“No. My fault too. I saw the wires, for a second, I thought we’d fly through. Wrong.”

“You’ll

be rebuilt,” she said. “You don’t want to leave Earth yet, do you?”

“I have a mission, I think. I’ll do what I have to do, rebuild my old self back. I will not live to stay on the ground!” The next words I said as though I had said them in the lost places of my memory. “You will, too, Puff. You saved my life! We’ll rebuild the both of us.”

“I will, too?” A flicker of hope. “You’re still in the hospital, and you’re thinking about rebuilding me?”

“Rebuilding us. Isn’t that what the spirit requires, when we climb over the wreckage of our lives, sometimes, we go on to make our lives our own affirmation? We are perfect expressions of perfect Love, here and now. There is no permanent injury.”

“Really? You’ll rebuild me, too?”

The suggestion that I wouldn’t do it, unthinkable. Whatever I had to do, I would do, and I knew I had said that before, some meeting during the coma. I didn’t remember what happened, but I had promised. If anyone told me I couldn’t, today, they were part of our wreckage. We would fly again. “Yes, I will. I’m no rebuilder, Puff, but I know the man who is…”

“In Florida.”

“In Florida. Valkaria, the airport where you were born in space-time.”

“How…”

“I’ll see him somehow. We’ll truck your body, Puff, your wings, your engine, 3,000 miles to his hangar.”

“I’d be… privileged… to fly with you again.”

I had her promise, she had mine.

There was light and life in the hangar, so drear the hour before. The light of it brushed Puff’s broken struts the color of sunshine. She would fly again.

“Thank you, Richard.”

“You knew, didn’t you? You were listening, at the meeting. You wondered if I would remember.”

“You weren’t supposed to remember.”

“I don’t. The certainty, though, that I would live, and you would, too, it’s not an intellectual remembering, it’s an emotional memory. I don’t recall words, if words were used, but it was important to me, that we’d fly again.”

“Just thought, not words,” she said. “Some of it was…impressive.”