And this one flew away

It was a full moon night. Her flight was waiting in a queue to take off. It was to be a while before their flight could take off. In the meantime, there were various flights taking off and landing. “But dada, when will we fly?”, she asked her dad. She was curious to know, how the flights came from the moon. The moonlight, bathing the sea of lights, surrounding her, had mesmerized her. Her innocent mind was wanting to see this huge sea from the moon. Lights had never failed to make her happy.

At that exact moment, one of the planes took off and it looked to her as if it flew right into the moon. “I also want to go inside the moon daddy! When will we fly?”, she said in the excitement of flying. “We will my princess”, replied her dad with a smile on his face. She had never failed to make him smile. However, she never understood why her dad always smiled at what she said. She was sure that she wasn’t being funny. Was there anything wrong in what she was saying? She never knew.

By now, their plane had started it’s taxi onto the runway. This took her mind off her dad and she got excited once again. In her imagination, she was now ready to swim in this ocean of lights.  Her curiosity to know how it looked from the moon and the excitement to go inside the moon were about to be fulfilled. Slowly, the plane arrived on the runway and was preparing to start its burst before taking the leap of faith in the air…

And just like an athlete who runs before his jump, the plane got in its stride for the burst. The little girl could feel butterflies in her stomach as the plane gained speed. “Daddy, I feel like there are butterflies in my stomach!”, she said, scared that maybe the last time she slept near the window, butterflies would have gone inside her stomach through her mouth. “Don’t worry little one. It happens to me too”, her dad replied reassuringly. She wasn’t convinced, though, and decided to let it pass as she had become conscious of all the eyes on her. She sunk in her seat and turned her head towards the window again. The window looked like her exit out of those staring eyes. The lights had started to zoom past the windows. Suddenly she felt a jerk and the next thing she could see was that the ground was getting farther and farther away from her. She looked around to notice that the lights were now below her. The next thing she saw was a work of an artist.

Someone had taken all of the lights in the world and thrown them around on a black canvas. There was no method to the spread. It had order. There were a few colors here and a few colors there. And there was a collage of white and yellow lights all around them. At that moment, the plane turned to reveal a new view of the sight and it was the most beautiful view she had ever seen. There was moon right in front of the plane. She was flying into it. There was a sea below the moon, reflecting the moon and a few stars around it. There were random patches of glowing land in between of the blackness of the sea. Not too far from those patches, was the land she had flown from. The yellow light running around it gave it a sense of fire. The white gave it a sense of life. And to this land, were a couple of connected islands. Vehicles running on the connecting bridges, with their glowing lights, gave an impression of the heart pumping blood to various organs. At this point, lights played a trick on her and she felt that the city was alive. She could sworn that she had seen the city beat, just like heart. However, the awe of it all got the better of her. The image imprinted itself onto her memory and reality slowly started turning into dream and she drifted away to sleep. Her dad looked at her sleeping face, smiled and thought to himself, “And this one flew away!”