Hello, I'm Elly. This is far from my debut into the fanfiction world, even though this is the first story I'm publishing on this account. Props to you if you can locate/figure out what some of my older stories are! I guess you could call this another hesitant step forward rather than a first step.
I hope that many of you can smile and take my stories for what they are, because as writers and as people, we've all stood in the same general area, looking out the same general window into the same general landscape, at one point or another.
The Airplane Challenge began on the six-hour plane ride from New York LaGuardia to Pheonix, AZ. I was on my way home from visiting the school I am now attending, Sarah Lawrence.
Stuck between a fussy six year old and a snoring old man, I devised a challenge in which I had to take six themes/motifs derived from objects or actions or phrases I observed on the plane and write a connected story about them. One chapter for every hour of the ride.
To motivate myself, I wrote about Neji and Tenten.
This piece is contrived as snapshots of their rather interesting relationship, which ended up taking on a life of its own. Each one is different and not necessarily connected, so the entire work is disjointed as a whole. Each chapter is like a bead on a bracelet—different, but all strung together into something that just happens to be.
That's how life is sometimes. Not all of life is going to have that complete coherence often found in fiction. Sometimes, things are left unsaid and unexplained. Sometimes, there are things that just are. That just happen.
When I was young, I used to think airplanes could take off just because that's how things were. It was with a tricky sort of magic that I believed certain things could just happen.
Of course, now that I'm seventeen going on eighteen, I realize there's a specific, physical reason why they can fly.
But we often lose much in the process of crossing over from childhood to adulthood. I wanted challenge myself to remember everything, as Neji does in this piece.
And thus, the Airplane Challenge was born.
A/N. I have written this story in its entirety, but I'll upload it one chapter at a time to contribute to its overall incoherence. Memories are best relived slow, and one at a time. Enjoy!