“taking off”

Delphine always wanted to pilot her father’s plane and when he forgot his keys on her tenth birthday, she knew that taking off would be easy. 

Everything was already in order: the gears, the locks, the control board. Not that Delphine needed it be set before she started; the girl had seen her father fly innumerable times, and she could recite the position of each switch and pedal with her eyes closed. But it was nice, she supposed, that the plane was prepared to take off before she even entered it. Because as her father rummaged their small home for his car keys, Delphine would take the Marshall Jane for a short spin and come back down before Pops even noticed anything awry.

As she swooped in the air, enjoying the unique closeness to the sky and the sun and world above, the newly ten-year-old remembered something she ought to have considered before she even began. Taking off would be easy. Landing, on the other hand, was a completely different story.

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Word count: 145. For Monday’s Finish-the-Story. I had some trouble with the given sentence start, but I think I managed through. Ah, Delphine. Maybe her father pre-set the plane to teach her a lesson… who knows.

✪ Angie