above the ground, pt. 2

Somehow it happened and I was flying east again, losing hours, days, watching the mountains fade away under me. Pike's Peak shimmered in the distance. It was tiny, the only interruption on the horizon. I thought about the last time I stood under that mountain. It had seemed so huge. I thought about the relativity of size, and of distance, and of time. Everything seems bigger from up in the air, even as it diminishes.

The sun doesn't set when you fly east. You outrun it. I watched the sky fade like watercolors, washing from blue to pink to gold to darker blue, all in one broad swath. The backs of the airplane wings shone, gilded.

Ahead of us was darkness. But as we flew headlong into it, the stars came out. First, below us, the scattering of yellow sparks; then, above us, the clouds thinned and the cold silver glittered through. The stars were as far away as ever, one hundred million light-years in the past. Below, whole cities spread out like tea-leaves at the bottom of the cup. To the people on the ground, we were just another glinting light, winking far off. Distance. Time. Relativity. We sailed on, sandwiched between the stars below and the stars above, and we were a star ourselves.