Beyond and Within

"Where's Jenn?" he yelled. "Did you get her carrier?"

Andersen looked at him. "No, sorry. I thought you had her..."

He pulled his body through the waist-deep water into the cockpit, saw her carrier floating near the overhead panel. "Damn, girl, we're going down fast," he said as he grabbed her carrier by the strap and pulled her close -- as his head slipped underwater.

Her carrier floated free for a moment and when he tried to pull it under it got caught on the ceiling so he stood on the seat-back and unzipped her case, pulled her free.

"Sorry about this, girl," he said as she licked the tip of his nose. "We're going to get wet today, but hang on tight..."

He held her to his chest as he made his way through the cockpit door, then after his head emerged from the swirling water he saw the raft was gone, the main door almost completely awash. There was still daylight ahead, where the sundered, open hull lay, and he saw a breaking wave hit the opening and push the hull into another roll. He pulled them along, walking on the overhead bins and seat-backs, until he was at the opening. He pulled himself free with one hand, the other holding Jenn securely to his chest...

"There they are!" he heard Andersen shout. "Paddle that way!"

Another wave broke over the hull and he felt a piecing pain in his gut, looked down and saw a long shard on metal sticking out of his belly.

"That can't be good," he said, and Jenn was looking at him now, and he thought he saw sorrow in her eyes. Or was he looking at a reflection of his own feelings?

He tried to pull free but couldn't, and as his face slipped under the sea he held the last love of his life to the light, and he felt grasping hands take her. He could see her as the wing began to sink and pull away from the hull, and then he could see he had been impaled by a fragment of the wing, but that didn't matter now. He watched her now, saw her looking at him as he fell away from her, then he turned his face to the stars and soon all was lost in their blinding light.

+++++

King watched embers flicker and lift on a passing current, and as one settled his eyes went to the point, and he fought back a tear as he looked at them sitting by the sea.

"What is it, Grandfather," one of his girls asked.

"I was thinking of him."

"Who? The airplane man?"

"Yes, the airplane man."

"Is he still out there?" his little girl asked.

"Yes. Still. The people from far away found his airplane, most of it, anyway. But they never found him. They looked and looked, but he had left by then. I think he sailed away, maybe to the stars."

"Was he your friend, Grandfather?"

"Yes, he is."

"Where is he? I mean, where did it happen?"

King stood and pointed. "Look past the girls, just past the waves breaking over the rocks. He went down there, or so they say."

"Is that why they look at the rocks, Grandfather?"

King looked at the two girls, at these two Jenns down on the point overlooking the sea, but it was always the same -- it had been for years. So many years. They watched, and they waited.

"Yes," King said. "That is why."

People told him from time to time it wasn't natural for a little dog to have lived so many years, but what did they know? What did people really know about a love like hers?

She watched as the big star fell from the sky, and when her King failed to walk out of the sea and come back to her, the little pup turned to face the stars once again and she sang her song to the wind.

*

(C) 2018 Adrian Leverkühn | abw | as always, just a simple bit of fiction