The Flight

*quick short story*

By this time tomorrow, Kalika would be far, far away from Leoni and Kaajal. Wait. This time + 2.5 hours later? Or this time, but 2.5 hours earlier? Oh! She was going mad. A moment ago she had calculated. Now, she couldn't remember. "Ask passengers sitting next to you", mom had told her. "Be careful who you speak to", warned dad, concerned. Kalika wasn't sure who to listen.

Soon, she must decide.

But now, all she wanted to do was run away, or in this case, fly away. But the aluminum box holding her and 400 other friendly souls or cunning souls, depending on which parent you listened to, seemed to have been made with one clear specification. Don't let Kalika run out. Floating that high in the sky, where the arrow of time was changing direction, where houses seemed to small too be comfortable in, and clouds loomed ahead like menacing ghosts, the 400 guards that surrounded her too seemed to have one missive - don't let Kalika run out. If she listened closely, the monotonous, devilish chant of the pressurized cabin said - don't let Kalika run out.

400 stern guards, she thought. It dawned on her that it had long ago been decided, which parent she would listen to. Kalika was her father's daughter. It was on his wish that she was sent to a boarding school in another continent, at such a young age. And it was his wish that she was now returning to a stranger land, her homeland, at long last, to be with her parents forever.

Soon, in a span of this single flight, they would go from being family.... to being strangers.