Excerpt:

BING!

The fasten seatbelt sign lit up. Rasmus took brief notice of this through a swiveling of his eyes to the side before returning to his serious gazing out the little cabin window. He was fairly far back in the plane, and his view was nearly free of obstructions. Further up he could see the tip of the wing jutting out majestically like the span of some large motherly bird that was carrying them all over the ocean to safety. The sun was on Rasmus’ side of the plane, but it was fairly high up in the sky at this point, high enough that Rasmus could look out the window without it burning into his eyes and that he could leave the window shade up without the warmth of the sunlight collecting on his chest as though it were made of flypaper, but for light and warmth instead of flies. There was a good bit of cloud cover, though, and the sunlight reflecting off all the puffy white forms was actually pretty blinding. Rasmus had been staring out the window long enough that he had for the most part gotten used to it, but his eyes were still slitted into a squint.

“Ladies and gentlemen we are experiencing just a little bit of turbulence. The Captain has turned on the fasten seatbelt sign. Please remain seated with your seatbelt fastened tight and low across your lap. Thank you.”

The scratchy announcement clicked off and the sounds of the cabin were returned once more to the dominant hum of the engines and the underlying whish of the air vents and the bubbling murmurs of the few conversations that were taking place within hearing range.

“Sorry, are you reading that?” asked the woman next to him suddenly in a thick British accent.

“Sorry what?”

Rasmus spun around to face her and saw nothing but blue darkness as his eyes were now accustomed to blinding cloud and he found he actually could not see a single thing. He blinked feverishly many times.

“The newspaper,” she said.

Rasmus just sat there for a few more seconds blinking hard. As his eyes slowly, slowly began to make out the shapes of the interior of the plane and then the colors that went with them and finally the details, he found himself looking straight into the face of a woman who was staring at him with her hand extended out in the direction of his seat pocket and who was starting to develop an ever so slight furrow of confusion in the middle of her brow as she had apparently been staring and pointing for a little longer than normal by now. Rasmus followed her hand to where there was a newspaper shoved into his seat pocket. Suddenly it all clicked.

“Oh! No, sorry, go ahead, sorry I couldn’t see anything, I was just…” he trailed off, realizing this was idiotic and unnecessary. She nodded a sort of unsure thanks to him, clearly still finding this peculiar, and snatched the newspaper. Rasmus just turned away and back out the window. That was weird.