A/N: Um. This chapter sucks. Sorry. Just finished school and figured I had to get something out. Sorry.
Reyna woke to a screeching alarm and something falling on her head.
She hadn't even realized that she had drifted off, but now that she was up, she could see that the whole plane was in a state of panic. Mortals screamed and grabbed at the armrests; mothers hurried to get masks over the faces of the children, ignoring their own; flight attendants had wedged themselves in between the bathroom stalls, looking as though they were going to faint. Reyna snatched the mask dangling in front of her eyes and yanked it over her head. The elastic band caught on her hair and was too tight, but she didn't have time to loosen it. Next to her, Hylla was screaming. Reyna had never seen Hylla's stoic mask deteriorate so completely—the person next to her was a ghost of the sister she knew.
With a massive jolt and sound of screeching metal, the plan suddenly began to spin in violent circles. Reyna's stomach dropped out from under her and she wondered if they'd been caught in a tornado until someone on the other side of the plane screeched, "We've lost a wing!"
Reyna seized the armrests and held on for dear life. There was a rattling and some of the overhead compartments burst open. Only one had a suitcase, and thankfully the other had only a duffle and a pillow, but all three became aerial projectiles zooming over the heads of passengers. The plane was going down. They were actually crashing.
"You'll take that back if we go plummeting out of the sky," said Hylla's voice in her mental ear.
The duffle flew over her head and Reyna screamed, afraid that if she bent over she'd lose her air mask. As it was, it was a miracle the duffle didn't rip the tube right off. Her ears popped and she realized they were losing altitude. They were plummeting toward the surface of the Earth, and out her half open window Reyna caught a glimpse of a rainy mountain range, barely distinguishable from the grey clouds that loomed behind it. A peak shot up past the window and Reyna caught the briefest of glimpses of cars on a highway. They were coming in very hard, very fast.
We're dead, she thought.
Then they hit the ground.
The jolt sent Reyna rocketing upward, only to be stopped by the seatbelt in a manner that felt as though she had dislocated both hips. Her head smashed the wall and Hylla smashed into her shoulder, before everyone was thrown forward and the plane came to a sudden, brutal stop.
Her head was bleeding and her heart was pounding so fast she was in risk of death by shock, but they had stopped moving. It felt as thought the most terrifying roller coaster in the world had come to a halt, and now they could please exit the ride. Hylla had all but fainted. Reyna removed her mask as well as her own, leaving them to dangle and batting at one half-heartedly as it swung back to smack her in the face. The whole cabin was tilted back, like they were still ascending after take off. The screams hadn't stopped, and neither had the scrape of metal on metal, but they had come to a stand still. They had, miraculously, not died.
And they were most likely indirectly responsible for the crash.
Reyna knew that they had to move. They had to get away before the mortals took them to a hospital (although Hylla looked like she might need one) or asked for some kind of identification. She unbuckled her seatbelt and turned in her seat to face the back end of the plane.
There was a collective scream as the whole cabin descended a dozen feet, coming to a less than stable rest again. Faced with the prospect of staying in the unsteady and wrecked plane or working their way out, people chose the latter. Even Hylla stirred from her traumatized hole, allowing Reyna to pull her the rest of the way up.
"Out," she demanded. Reyna was happy to oblige, but pointed out that Hylla was blocking her way to the aisle. They slid down to the back of the plane like it was a steep slide. The rear had smashed and buckled upon impact to create a rude tear in the metal just wide enough for Reyna to slip through. Hylla clambered through after her and without any exchange of words they started running away from the wreck and toward the distant road, distinguishable from the rest of the grey landscape only by the bright bodies of the cars that trundled across it.
By the time they reached the highway, the spectacle of the plane spiraling to earth had caused cars to come to a complete standstill. Some would-be-heroes were jumping the barrier and sprinting down the slope toward the wreck, with the intent of saving or aiding those inside. Others were simply recording it on their iPhones. Some stared at Reyna and Hylla but they jumped the barrier and disappeared into the crowd of people swarming to the side. Not until they had moved a good distance away did they stop and look back.
The tail of the plane was blackened by what could only be a lightning bolt. The left wing and ripped off and what remained of the cabin was leaned sickeningly against the base of a mountain. The windows in the cockpit had shattered and the bottom twelve feet of the plane were smashed, but survivors were straggling out, screaming and running from the disaster.
"Told you it was a bad idea," Hylla said.
"What?"
"To fly."
"It wasn't my idea! You did everything!"
Hylla shrugged at set off down the gridlock of cars, simply assuming Reyna would follow. Like always, she did.