Disclaimer: I am not Lynette Noni
Just nothing more than a random little oneshot I just typed up! Hope you guys enjoy!
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She was a remarkably settled child, noted the flight attendant, her interest piqued by the young girl seated between her parents in the forty-first aisle. Nearly every toddler and infant passenger would wail and cry and demand their parents' fussing, and on the unfortunate occasion, project something vile from either end. But this little girl was as quiet as a mouse.
Evidently she had been on planes before, concluded the flight attendant as she patrolled up and down the aisles, occasionally stealing a glance at the little girl. She wasn't even capturing her parents' attention at all - something the stewardess found a novelty in itself - but instead happily embossed in the two toys in the grasp of each of her chubby hands. The first was a mermaid rag doll, with bubblegum-pink hair and a muted holographic tail. The second was a soft fluffy toy so loved and battered that it was beyond identifying its original form, a pale buttery yellow, with long bits of fabric that were either ears or limbs.
Despite the rocky, rumbling disturbance of turbulence as the plane continued upwards, the child wasn't deterred at all. No, she simply sat there, happy as a lark as she waved her toys in the air and sang a language of her own to them. The flight attendant couldn't help but smile at the sight of it. The girl was also completely adorable, with a soft head of brown ringlets, a faint splatter of freckles, and bright, inquisitive eyes.
The flight attendant's gaze travelled curiously to the child's parents, both hunched over what looked like a set of documents. Neither cared to keep their voices to a minimum as they blathered on a mile a minute - something about archaeology? Whatever it was, it thankfully was yet to disturb the other passengers, everyone else still distracted by the turbulence. The parents, mid thirties by the looks of them, had barely even given their little girl a kindly word of assurance, since the husband had taken the papers out of his satchel.
The flight attendant watched the artificial light dance on the mermaid's holographic tail as she contemplated what exactly it was about this whole environment that the girl was accustomed to. Was it the takeoff? The mere experience of an airplane? How easily her parents were distracted, ignoring her for the sake of their own adult matters?
She suspected it was all of these.
And she was already beginning to guess the little girl's predicament. The daughter of globetrotters, who would know only airport terminals and crappy hotel rooms, not a proper place to call her own or any true opportunities to experience the same things every other kid. That girl would be stuck following her parents around the world - until an older age, where she would cut herself free, like a balloon that had been tied down for far too long. And just like every other balloon without an anchor, the winds would carry her, either to be eventually punctured by the interfering branches of a tree, or into the arms of somebody actually grateful to have her.
The flight attendant wondered whether the girl would find thorns, or a loving embrace. The child was far too young, and she had spent such a short time observing her, so there was no telling what sort of a balloon the child would be.
Finally the turbulence was sedated, and the other passengers relaxed, filling the shared space with the sounds of snatched conversation, the hum of the plane's technology, babies' wails, and some poor woman being airsick. The flight attendant now had work to do, but all the while, as she patrolled aisles and allocated meals and assisted passengers, she wondered about the quiet little girl in the forty-first row.
At some point, when the hours grew thin and the brighter overhead lights fluttered to a darker grey, the passengers asleep apart from those occupied by the back-seat movies and the occasional person shuffling towards the amenities, did the flight attendant catch an glimpse of the little girl. Curled up like a cat, with her tiny head resting on her mother's lap, hidden under a mass of fleecy grey blanket. The buttery yellow of the misshapen teddy was barely visible, tucked under her chin. Her mother was also dozing, a hand resting on her daughter in a particularly motherly gesture.
Shaking her head, the flight attendant moved away. Honestly, she thought to herself. She's just a quiet little girl. There's nothing out of the ordinary about that.
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The flight attendant rarely forgot a face, and it was the parents who she finally recognised, hours into the flight from Los Angeles to Sydney. Noticeably, they had aged quite a bit - but no wonder, a full decade had passed - but indeed she recognised them, those disruptive archaeologists from all those years ago. The husband now had salt-and-pepper hair and his skin was beginning to crease and sag, and the woman's hair had thinned, her body now aged.
She told herself she was being ridiculous. Surely this wasn't that same family. There were billions of people in the world … you couldn't possibly come across the same three individuals twice when travelling internationally. Tutting to herself, the flight attendant hurried to the cubicle in the space between the economy and the business seating, refusing to look at the middle seats of the nineteenth row.
But the flight attendant could never resist a quick peek, so she did exactly that.
The daughter looked about thirteen, perhaps fourteen, having grown into a slim, rather pretty, young girl. Her shiny brown hair was wound into two fat Dutch braids, and she wore a grey t-shirt with the glimpse of a green backpack lying in her lap, as she delved around it in search of some unknown prize. A moment later, the girl withdrew a previously opened bar of Cadbury chocolate. She snapped off a row, offered her parents a few squares each, before exchanging the remaining bar for - a novel. The fourth Harry Potter book, by the looks of the rather battered cover.
She was surely being ridiculous, the flight attendant told herself. This was just an ordinary, generic teenager, travelling with her parents and reading a Harry Potter book. And it wasn't like the daughter would recognise her in the first place - she would have seen the faces of hundreds of flight attendants thanks to her parents' lifestyle choice.
Shaking her head, the flight attendant turned to brew herself a nice, strong cup of tea. Even if that teenager was the same quiet little girl with the mermaid and the misshapen bear - well, it didn't matter. The flight attendant would never know her personally, would never have to speak to her in anything further than polite small talk - so she would drop the matter.
And that was that.
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Hmm. What did you think?