Look Out Your Window.

I was restless, not from fear of flying-but from the ache that racks my body when I sit in one station for too long. I needed to run-or sleep. The roar of the engine drowned out any of my lasting senses and I simply turned off the music I was trying to force between my ears. I closed my eyes, miserable. Miserable.

Then.

"Look out the window." The words were whispered by the man from Spain sitting in front of me. I knew he was speaking to his companion who was seated behind him, but while he was turned in his friend's direction speaking, his eyes were on mine. "Look out the window." I followed his command. First, white-a haze of nothingness, a dreamlike fuzz that transitions you from sleep to the real world and then there was the city. Piled high, stacked close, rustling itself and threatening to push itself outside of its own borders and into the nothingness below. The clouds were unmoving and structured meticulously, built into skyscrapers and valleys. The ground was more, more, more white, the sky above was a startling shade of peacock blue and smattered with tiny, whispery clouds. Clouds watching over clouds.

Then.

We burst from the ethereal city and into weightless blue beneath, down further and faster. I felt my stomach creep up my throat, and my body wanted to lift out of the seat, to stay above. Again, I closed my eyes-the roar of the engine came back to my senses and taunted me out of the happy escape. Forcing myself too let go of the city in the sky, I looked out the window again, expecting to be disappointed. At first, there was nothing, just dots and an unimpressive pallet of similar colours. I strained my eyes, peering through the diaphanous weave of ice crystals clinging to my window and forced my head to separate the images and colours below.

Then.

Mountains. Hurtling from the core of the earth and up to the welkin world above, like angry dogs on a chain pulled to the absolute limit of their cage, reaching, reaching for just what cannot be attained. The cold and inhuman formations were startlingly and unnervingly beautiful. There was no sign of human life, just the stretching rock veiled by snow and ice. I considered for a moment the earth-shattering sound that must have been made when they were created, rushing into themselves as flat ground and then shouldering up and crashing head on, creating an eternal embrace of rock on rock closer to the sky.

Then.

Ground. Cold. Pulling and stretching myself into a pullover and wrestling my baggage from the overhead compartment. A parting glance from the man who told me to just "Look out the window", and I was in the world of eerie rock and snow.