Photo by Johny Goerend on Unsplash
I love the window seat when flying on a plane. Living in the greater Seattle area involved clouds more often than not (only Anchorage Alaska beat us on cloudy days), and the chance to break through and get above them for once made me feel like I conquered the world even if it was a simple commute to Buffalo New York for our twice-a-year meet-up of all the virtual employees at World-Connected. Being the manager of the western seaboard meant I had extra in-person meetings with the big-wigs and couldn’t skate by in a nice top and pajama bottoms from home even if half of the meetings would be virtual break-out groups with my team members on satellite delay.
The rain against the window on the runway as we coasted into position quickly turned into a gray wall of fluff streaking water as I was pressed against the seat during our initial climb. Light flickered in-and-out the higher we climbed; the cloud varying between cotton ball white and melancholy charcoal as we passed through mountains of atmospheric moisture. Until, finally, we leveled out with the world below stretched as far as I could see a rolling landscape of white hills and a brilliant sky of blue except for the burning ball of brilliance far too close to look at long.
I won again. The cloud cannot hold me down! I smiled at my whimsy, but the truth is, I also felt it in my soul, like a release from gravity.
I should probably move away from a place where clouds cover the sky over sixty percent of the time, but I had scored a house secured between three major cable carriers and also came with a satellite dish in the backyard leftover from the eighties. It had only needed a little tweaking to get working, and with the generator I added, I never had downtime. My bosses loved it.
I saw a plane shadow race past below us, likely the one I will be using to return back home in four days. I half-lowered the window shutter at the request of my seat companion, who started snoring almost immediately thereafter even though we had a mid-morning flight. Pulling out a book on the ethics of generative AI from my smaller carry-on, I divided my attention between the clouds as we passed over the Rockies and work reading.
We were passing over the patchwork quilt of the Midwest where scrub-brush brown was broken by wheels of irrigated green crops when the light dropped, making it hard to read though I no longer was being mildly cooked by the nearby sun. Annoyed, I looked out the window; it wasn’t even lunch time, though we were working against the clock with this passage from west to east.
No clouds above or below. The mid-summer heat dome had pushed the moisture up to Canada.
Instead, something passed slowly in front of the sun.
There was no eclipse scheduled.
And the object eclipsing the sun wasn’t disc-shaped.
(words 502; first published 8/16/2026 – created for Writer Workshop Prompt: Set your story in or on a car, plane, or train. Let the journey, destination, or confined space shape the characters and events. – word limit of two pages or less)
