Logan was different from the first day I met him. He was sitting at the drawing table adding the head and feet to a dragon.

"Not many people know that Da Vinci designed his glider wings from dragon wings."

"That's interesting," I said, "I didn't know that there were dragons around when Leonardo was alive."

He gave me a look that suggested that I had failed a critical test, then went back to his drawing. I made a mental note not to patronize this kid.

I was moonlighting as a security guard in a school for children with "problems". Problems which meant that they were under twenty-four hour guard with ankle bracelets that set off alarms if they walked through the wrong door. Logan was a new arrival.

I went to my station and looked at the paperwork from yesterday. For someone whose only job was to keep kids from escaping, I have an inordinate amount of paperwork.

"Good afternoon, Harry." Dr. Sal said, "It was a quite a night. Four of the fourteens tried to climb out the bathroom window."

"I did suggest that you allow me to take them to the game."

"You are here to provide security not advice." She glared at me. "And speaking of security, the bathroom window needs to be fixed."

"Fixing windows is maintenance's job."

"Fixing them so boys can't climb out of it is security's job." The doctor stalked off. I pushed the paperwork aside and went to the boy's bathroom and looked at the window. It was a sash window, so it was easy to stop the window at four inches.

"So, you're making sure they can't take another runner." Logan walked and washed his hands. "Of course it won't stop them from using the Girl's."

"I'll do the Girl's next."

Logan winced.

"You won't tell them it was my idea?"

"Nah, I'll blame Dr. Sal."

"Nobody likes her."

"She would tell you it isn't her job to be liked. It's her job to keep you safe."

"You mean the rest of the world safe from us."

"That too."

I saw Logan a lot standing at the fence staring out at the rest of the world. I always said 'hello', Logan always ignored me. It became our own private ritual.

"I'm going to bust out of this joint.," Logan said. He was leaning against the wall while I did my paperwork.

"Isn't telling me going to make it harder?" He just smiled.

"Back to the craft room, young man," Dr. Sal said. Logan just grinned wider and headed up to the fourth floor.

"You aren't supposed to talk to them Harry," the doctor said, "just keep them in line."

"It's hard to do that if I can't talk to them."

"If you can't do the job, you'd better find other work."

I gritted my teeth. I needed this job, or rather, I needed the paycheck that went with it.

"What did he do?"

"He robbed a bank," Dr. Sal said. "Don't let his looks fool you. He's a menace."

"I can't imagine him with a gun."

"There are more ways to rob a bank than with a gun. He's a flight risk so watch him." She walked off with her usual abruptness.

After the boys were locked in their rooms, I did my rounds. Kitchen, bathrooms, classrooms. Even in prison the kids were expected to keep up their work. I finished on the top floor where the craft room was. A large structure filled the room, it looked vaguely familiar. It wasn't going to fit out of the room anyways.

I went back down to my desk and my paperwork. Every evening I checked the building and finished in the craft room. I recognized the wings from Logan's drawing. He was building a dragon out of balsa and paper.

A week later the alarm on the roof door went off and I rushed up to check it out. The kids weren't allowed on the roof but every once in a while maintenance left the door unlocked and we had a full lock down.

I was staring at the maintenance door flapping in the wind when Dr. Sal run up beside me.

"He's not in the building!"

"Who?"

"Logan!"

I thought of the dragon in the craft room and ran to check on it. Sure enough the body was there, but the wings were gone.

"Oh no," I said, "He's gone over the edge!"

"What!" Dr. Sal ran out of the room. I caught her arm just as she was going to go right over after him.

I peered down and saw the wreckage of the wings floating in the river.

"I guess we better phone the police," I said, "Poor kid."

"Poor kid?" Dr. Sal screamed at me. "He's escaped!"

"That river is still in full flood. He'd never make it out alive."

They dragged the river from one end to the other and searched both banks. They never found his body.

I was the most obvious scapegoat; so they fired me and I went back to my farm out west. A few days later my 'nephew' Logan joined me there.

"A diversion," I'd told him, "You need a diversion." He caught on right away. He's a smart kid. They'd locked him up to force him to tell where he transferred the money. They weren't likely to find it now.

Twenty million dollars.

Even a farmer could live on that kind of money for quite a while.

The Faerie King

He crouched. High above the city the trace of a wind caressed his ebony hair. He bore his wings wide against the world — a world unrecognisable from when he would roam the Earth and ride the waves of the wind; when there were no bounds to the realms of reality or imagination, when he, the Faerie King, could twist with nimble thoughts and fingers the hands of time itself.

The bells in the tower tolled and echoed upon his soul. This cityscape of glass and steel had perhaps forgotten how to dream — forgotten the art of nature and the craft of magic. He laid his hand upon the stone of the tower and the stone breathed gently under his touch as though an ancient magic coursed through its veins. He felt the anguished cry of demons from the deep in tongues long since forgotten by man. The rage and fury of these beasts which man and nature scorned were now nought but stone and dust upon the towers; relics of a lost world, still burning with wrath. And as he looked on, his song was a lament of the past.

      When time was young, upon the wind I twirled,
      'Twas on the edge of dream where lay my throne;
      A Faerie King amid the mortal world —
      Where basked fantastic beasts of scale and bone.

      Though love of man is nought but crooked lies.
      Those beasts with sinew wings and spines and tail —
      Within the stone I felt their anguished cries,
      Now relics turned to stone 'neath dusty veil.

And Rowan Morfinn, Faerie King, drank in this ancient draught; his alabaster skin reflected the moonshine while his hair and wings foreshadowed midnight skies, and dark behind those sapphire eyes lurked the glimmer of ancient magic. High above the city he looked out as vibrant rainbow colours glinted upon the sheet glass walls of the modern world below. He crouched with his knees tight to his chest and an otherworldly smile playing upon his lips; perhaps his art were not dead after all.

He closed his eyes and retreated into his mind. Amid his haven, his nest of silk and feathers, he crossed the fragile bridge of age-worn stone to the timeless land of Faerie. An eerie glow half lit a world where dwelt the time-scorned creatures of the mist… Home.

With long, nimble fingers he plucked thistles and skeleton dandelions, scattering downy seeds upon the breath of the breeze. And thus he wandered free betwixt these realms, where once it was not just those of faerie-blood who strolled.

High up in his rooftop lair, the raven crowed and woke Lord Rowan from his slumber. The raven, with its jewelled eyes and iridescent rain-dark feathers, perched within its gilded cage, upon a throne befitting emperors from 'cross the oriental seas, reflected all that his master threatened to be in this brave new world of man.

Rowan Morfinn surveyed the Earth under the rolling rosy glow of dawn, the crystal dew just settling upon the moss and lichen covered stones, like faerie-lights, reminding the King of home — as near as his mind, as far as the rising sun. And so his ethereal smile became a grin, flashing for an instant the points of his sharp teeth beneath the thin trace of his blood-dark lips.

And basking in the purple haze of the early morning skies, he took flight… an obsidian silhouette against the stark cosmopolitan skyline, awakening in ancient tongues a world of long-forgotten magic where sorrow fell like diamonds amid soft feathers, when time was never time at all, where beauty ravaged the purity of nature and bent her to his will, both wicked and sublime.

His flight twisted and twirled up above the clouds, then down amid the spires. He touched upon the ancient stones and felt the crumbling stonework writhe and ebb and flow. The stone beasts that roost above the city's brow breathed, and that breath filled the dreams of the men sleeping down below in their modern high-rise apartments… Those dreams, draped in ancient magic meandered through the city streets. And thus the ancient beasts were woken from their dark oblivion; the creatures that time and nature had forgotten breathed the air of the mortal realm, and felt the draw of magic through their veins and the sinew of their wings.

With morning came a radiance of myriad colours of rainbow sunlight that danced upon the cityscape. Thus Rowan Morfinn, Faerie King, a flash of evil in the grin filled with pointed teeth, revelled amid the clouds, and his song whispered with delight.

      But bittersweet the world of man awakes
      My heart and broken landscape of my dreams.
      For flight on ancient wings my soul it aches —
      An alchemy alive with primal screams.

      And thus the scent of magic fills the lands,
      For destiny lies in a Faerie's hands.

From house and building, far below, the mortal folk stared in wonder at this unnatural, otherworldly light, as though in awe. And the beasts, freed from their penitence of stone, en masse, from perch and tower, roost and spire, took flight — the unwitting spells of man's machines were broken. The gulf between here and there was no longer so wide.

I look at my watch - 13:02.

Five hours of torture remain.

I sit rigid in the seat, hands clenched tightly on the arm rests, knuckles white, palms moist. I’m wide awake and utterly exhausted. The previous flight was long, this one delayed and I haven't slept for 36 hours. I glance over at my wife, Mary, in the adjacent seat. She’s fast asleep, her head propped up against the window shutter, a mere two inches separating her delicate face from the sub-zero temperatures and near vacuum of thirty thousand feet of altitude.

Cursing my imagination, I force my eyes forward, close them and exhale a long staggered breath, my fingers relax a little.

THUMP!

My eyes shoot open. A vibration shoots up my legs and spine and dissipates in the pit of my stomach, leaving its cold poison to linger. That was not right, not right at all. Surely I am not the only one who heard it, who felt it. The galley phone starts beeping, an evil red eye flashing in rhythm with its shrill voice. A stewardess (the one with the nice legs) scurries awkwardly down the aisle toward it. The panel above my head comes to life and the seatbelt sign starts flashing excitedly (mine, as always, is fastened) an oxygen mask drops from its hiding place and starts dancing wildly in front of my eyes.

And our cocoon is viciously torn apart

It materializes in the roof above the galley. Violently piercing it's way in, the outside tears the fuselage open, a gaping slash widens its way down the length of the plane like a giant zipper opening. The stewardess (with the nice legs) is the first to leave, expelled into the void and instantly followed by all manner of items both inanimate and human, sucked out as if mere insects beneath a vacuum cleaner. The floor of the cabin bulges outward under roof opening, then ruptures, sending splinters of tortured metal into the outside. I watch helplessly as the front half of the plane disengages from the back half, and the cabin floor is peeled back into the outside emptiness, taking along anything fastened to it. I have a split second to look to Mary before the unravelling floor reaches us. She is gone.

I feel the force pull me out and for the first time hear the grinding tortured screams of both men and machine and perhaps mostly my own. The last sound I hear is the rupturing of my own eardrums as they both burst like grapes, expelling eruptions of blood in either direction. Thin outside air grabs me in its strong icy grip, angrily thrashing me around in the turbulent wake of the severed aircraft. The images before my eyes are chaotic and random as the seat I'm still fastened to spins out of control, tearing through anything in its path, a severed leg momentarily gets caught on the empty seat beside me, its raw flesh already frozen solid, it is flung off again as we collide mid-air with a steel drinks trolley, its contents seemingly, orbiting around their former home. An unopened wine bottle bounces gently off my forehead and I realise that I am now in free-fall with the rest of the flotsam.

Plummeting, I get the chance to look around, frantically searching for Mary. I pass through a pocket of more air-resistant items, cell phones, wallets, magazines and I shield my face as a frozen packet of vomit shatters on the armrest, they appear to be falling in the opposite direction, trying to escape their eventual fate. All around me my flailing fellow passengers desperately grope for something to cling to. A man momentarily succeeds in grabbing the head rest of my chair but is immediately dislodged by a headless corpse onto which he clutches instead, embracing it, they veer off, his terrified screams falling silently after him.

As we descend, we scatter further apart, I am in my own space now, totally unhindered by anything or anyone, my chair settles into a consistent orientation, with me facing straight down toward our destination, which comes into focus in full horrifying Technicolor. The air is thicker now and I manage to gasp my first breath since leaving the plane. Below me I see the end, the clear blue, beautiful ocean on a calm, cloudless day. It takes me a second to comprehend the scene before me and I shudder at the violent beauty of it. A magical blue canvas glistening in the sunlight being painted and sprayed with dabs of colours from the brush of some insane god, a macabre, modern mosaic who’s splendour is granted only to the condemned and those destined to be a part of it. I watch as the splats of colour hit the canvas, fiery yellows, orange, white, black, silver ...and red.

As the blue races remorselessly toward me, I vaguely wonder which red dab is Mary, the tears in my eyes thaw and streak down my temples. Teeth clenched, my hands tighten on the armrests. I close my eyes and wait for the...

THUMP!

My eyes shoot open, the vibration reverberates though my crotch. I glance at Mary. She's fast asleep. A passing stewardess (the one with the nice legs) pauses and gently asks if everything is OK. I nod and she gives me a knowing smile before leaving.

I look at my watch - 13:07.

This is going to be a long flight.

She felt it before she heard it. She stopped her fussing and organising, and froze momentarily to pay close attention. Time ceased to have meaning as her reflex functions began their work.

An insidious sense of angst swept through her, firing her veins and spurring her muscles to action. The alarm flowed into her extremities, the burn of rapid response speeding her heart and dilating her pupils. Every nerve ending tingled. Every sound was magnified. All her senses went on high alert and, without her consent, prodded her into a sudden state of readiness. In less than a second she was prepared for whatever had startled her.

Then she heard it - the low, slow hum of the creature churning the water up behind it. She mentally scolded herself for not being prepared for it, but her responses were so instinctive that she was ready for action even before she was aware of its arrival. It came across the water to her every day, but her brave and showy displays had so far always scared it away. This was a daily dance between them and she wondered how long it would be before it realised that she had no real defence against its threats. How long before it ignored her posturing and challenged her bluff?

The creature saw her ready herself and stopped some distance away, obviously nervous. The low purr that came from it faltered and grew softer as it cowered before her. It moved from side to side to steady itself in the eddying water, and watched her as she raised herself up to full height.

Slowly she tilted her head to get a better view and the beast became still and quiet as if unnerved by her survey of it. However, it did not back down and she realised she had to do something more impressive to make it leave.

She lifted her wings and thrust downwards through her feet, pulling free of the tree and the nest atop it. She closed her eyes for an instant as the wind whipped past her face and then she looked to the curved horizon to get her bearings.

She beat her wings furiously as she shot upward, and felt the lifting air currents begin to carry her. As she gained altitude, she slightly opened her hooked beak and swallowed, pushing her tongue against the back of her throat until she felt her ears pop and the pressure in her head ease.

She felt a vortex of air wrap around her wingtips before she tilted the long tip feathers upwards to achieve the lift she needed. It required less and less energy to maintain her course and soon she was gliding effortlessly, suspended by an invisible thread, like a child’s mobile decoration.

The sounds of the earthbound world became muffled and then disappeared. The 'swoosh' of the updraft she was riding was all that penetrated the silence in her head. She had long ago learned to ignore this, to block out the whole world and concentrate on the liberation and joy of flying. Flight brought such freedom; such thrill and exhilaration. It was like a drug that coursed through her soul, without which, she was sure she would be lost.

The initial alarm in her body was steadying to a state of extreme awareness. She surveyed the area below her and banked slowly to the left to look back at her clutch. She knew it would take some time for anything to gain access to her nest, since it was so high in the tall tree among the thick mangroves at the edge of the water. But she couldn’t be too cautious. She let out a high warning scream, and injected a tone into it that could not be misunderstood as anything but aggression.

She had both the nest and the beast in her sight and although the creature seemed to be moving and writhing so that she thought it must be breathing hard, it had not advanced any closer to her domain. It was clearly nervous and kept its distance. Her showy flight and piercing scream must have done the trick, as it had many times before.

As she completed her full circle, she flattened her large wingtips and drifted down towards the branch that hung just above her nest. She stretched her long powerful legs forward, lowered her head and dropped the rear edges of her wings as she curved their tips forwards. The sudden drag of her wings slowed her and she manoeuvred close to her target. Her long curved toes touched the branch and closed reflexively so that she heard her claws click together to confirm their mark. She abruptly closed her wings into the sides of her body and alighted perfectly. This landing was tried and practised and had taken time to perfect, but now she was a master and it appeared effortless.

With satisfaction, she heard the creature bellow a loud roar of disappointment and it turned and skimmed away across the water. She listened hard and, above the wind, she fancied she heard the shrill sounds of many animals calling all at once, but they faded quickly and she couldn’t be sure.

Importantly, today’s threat was gone, but she wondered again how much longer she could keep up this pretence before the creature grew wise to her ruse.

From where I sit,
Seat 26B of the morning flight,
Between a sleepy lady and a man
Cradling a crying baby,
I can see the view
Outside my window.
Hazy gray mountains,
Lush sugarcane fields,
The airport tower,
And you.

“Why are you leaving me?”
You asked, whispered, yelled
For the tenth time
On the way to the airport.
“To see the World,”
I replied, sighed, cried
For the tenth time.
Outside my window,
Cane fields whizzed by,
A blurry gloomy green.

“Get ready for takeoff,”
The pilot announces.
Attendants walk down the aisle
Making sure our seatbelts are all fastened
As tight as the grip of a parent
On a child who tries
To run free.
Outside my window,
You wave in the distance
as if you knew I could see you.

With a roar, the plane lifts off the ground.
The mountains, the fields, the tower,
And you
Vanish as we rise higher than the clouds.
The lady snores, the baby shrieks,
And in between them,
I sit and watch the view
Outside my window
Where an iron wing
Slices the tranquil sky.

Through the narrow gap she could see brightness and hear a murmur and patter from the shadows surrounding the light. She was ready and eager to get started.

There was nothing more she could do to get ready, she was as prepared as she could be, but even so as she waited she shuffled her bare feet on the gritty floor and checked her clothing. It fitted her perfectly, as she knew it would, but she adjusted the shoulders and the cuffs anyway to settle it onto her body, and more so to fill in time.

Her sense of her body helped her feel its every ache and twinge, and she worked to keep them at bay. Bending, stretching to loosen her shoulders and hips, arching her back, and easing her knees and ankles she relaxed into the mind-place she needed for what she was about to do.

She stood prepared ”" trained, practiced, conditioned ”" awaiting her moment. In her mind she visualised all that was to come, every turn, twist and movement, over and over, around and around.

Her thoughts drifted as she waited, reliving other times when she had stood like this, passing the last few seconds in a calm and reflective state. She thought of all the different events and decisions that had brought her to this place and this time.

She remembered the bruises, the cuts, the burns, the blisters, and the wrenched muscles and joints that she had had. Those that she had done herself, as well as the ones that had happened to her; the pain and sometimes the fear that had moulded her, at times briefly, sometimes long-lasting, but all helping to bring her to this very moment, in this place.

Her mind drifted to earlier days, when she was learning her way. The first thrill of adrenalin, mixed with nervousness and excitement, the joy of the new-found freedom, the exhilaration and the satisfaction of doing something that took her away from the everyday. Every time she stepped up to the spill of colour and raised her hands to grasp it she was transported to another world, a world of joy mixed with apprehension, of freedom mixed with risk, but one of beauty and grace that she came to love and yearn for.

It was also a world of bruises, sore and injured muscles, strained shoulders and hips, and friction burns that sometimes took weeks to heal. But all that was worth it for the pleasure she got from escaping from her daily life.

But the pleasure was always short-lived and was followed by the crushing opprobrium heaped upon her by her family. Their refusal to accept that she had found something that was important to her, that she was GOOD at, and that she felt she needed to continue to do. Their efforts to keep her from her dream; their lies and bullying and abuse, their shouting and threats only made her more determined.

Until the day and the opportunity came, and she ran away to a new world, one where what she did was valued and applauded. One where she got treatment for her burns and strains and bruises, but even more importantly, she received the regard of others like her who saw them not as problems but as badges of honour - marks of the rite of passage they were all taking, each in their own way. Above all, she got recognition for her skills and daring. Where her dreams were not seen as strange or bad, but were recognised for what they were, and were considered normal and understood and shared by others who had similar dreams of their own. A world where people helped her to make her dreams come true, and to free her from the ordinary.

Through the gap she saw the brilliantly-coloured fabric fall like a waterfall to the centre of the circle of light, and heard the first introductory notes of her music. She distantly heard the crash of the drums and then the thunder of applause as she stepped forward into the round and began her brief, balletic flight from the pain of her past and into the joy of her routine - the one that took her up, up and away from everyday and into the realm of dreams.

A lone figure on a broken down horse rides through the desert. It wasn’t always a desert. Eight hundred years ago it was a thriving metropolis, a colorful city full of people, lights and buildings. She doesn’t know that, all she sees is the shelter the old structure will provide as night falls.

As she approaches the structure, she scans it for any sign of movement. After a week of seeing nothing more than buzzards and snakes, she is half grateful and half saddened to see no indication of life. She dismounts grabbing her almost empty canteen. After taking a small sip of water, she carefully pours the last of it into her horse’s mouth. She feels a slight pang, knowing that the horse wouldn’t live through the night and that she has just hastened her own death, but he had been a loyal companion and felt she owed him.

Water, nearly impossible to find, was the reason she was about to spend the next few days in agony as death overcame her. As she removed her meager supplies from the horse, she thought about the day when her world was shattered. She had been out hunting for her small band of family. She came back from the hunt expecting to see the haggard yet friendly faces of her people, to hear the wonderful stories the elders told around the campfire, amazing stories from a time long ago of magical things like light that did not come from a fire. Instead, she found only death and destruction. Her biggest fears had come to life. While she was gone, marauders had discovered them, killing everyone and stealing all their supplies. She bites back bitter tears as she says goodbye to her horse.

Having found a spot under the stone structure, she wastes no time marveling at the intricate carving of what was once a museum. She thinks of the fire she needs to make before the night creatures awoke and started to hunt. With a sigh, she rises and begins gathering twigs and branches. As she bends down to pick up a branch, she sees movement out of the corner of her eye. As she cautiously approaches, she realizes it’s a large scrap of tasseled fabric.

Having been a scavenger her entire life, digging it out was a matter of reflex. As she digs around the fabric, she doesn’t notice the ornate pattern of colors, dulled by time & dust. Instead, she notices how thick it is. As she digs away the dirt some more, she realizes that it was much larger than she was expecting. She debates on if she should bother to continue. She gives it a hard tug and it loosens from the dirt some more. She’s shocked at how easily it’s coming out. "It’s almost as if it’s helping me." she thinks. Giving herself a mental shake, she continues to dig and pull. After a remarkably short time, it comes completely free. "Well. It’s a rug." she thinks, "at least I’ll die in comfort and not on the hard ground." As she drags the carpet back to her spot, she marvels at how light it is, almost as if it’s floating.

Drifting off to sleep, she is glad she dug the rug out, for it was indeed comfortable. She falls asleep thinking of fresh water. As she softly snores the edges of the rug starts to flutter. As the night stretches on, it seems to move more and more. It begins to ripple gently and then a corner slowly rises off the ground. The sleeping girl does not know it, but she has discovered a wonder from a time long past. It wasn’t a mere rug. It was an invention of a powerful man long since dead, a rug he gave life to using a magic that had died with him. The rug, thankful to the girl for freeing it after centuries of crawling out of the once beautiful museum, takes flight. It flies gently at first, as if working the kinks of muscles, but by daybreak, it’s flying fast and strong, yet mindful of its sleeping passenger.

The girl awakens slowly. The first thing she notices is the wind. It’s cool, not normal for the desert. Slowly she opens her eyes and realizes she is no longer under the cover of the building. She jolts upright and immediately lays back down, clutching the fibers of the rug in a death grip. Slowly, she raises her head and peeks over the edge of the rug. She is amazed and petrified at what she sees. The rug is flying through the air and the desert she has known all her life is different, greener, more lush. After some time, she realizes that the magical rug is moving in ways to insure her safety and she grows bolder. Carefully, she rises to a sitting position. She is amazed at what she’s seeing, green plants and huge trees. Never in her wildest dreams could she imagine such beauty. Then slowly she realizes what she’s seeing in the distance. It’s not a mirage, but a true lake of water. As the rug begins a slow descent, she marvels at the wonder of what has happened. By pure chance, she had discovered the only thing that could save her life, a flying rug with the ability to find life giving water.

Kate pulled on the her space pants and space boots - the last pieces of her spacesuit. She put on the specially built helmet, climbed off her bed and set out to the launchpad just beyond the bottom of the garden, as she had done countless times before. There was just time for one more mission before bed, according to the Head of Mission Control. Of course, mum was only the Deputy Head of Mission Control, but Trex, her cat, was nowhere to be found so mum would have to do for now. Trex was going to be in trouble for missing an important space mission like this!
The rocket stood on the small hill, it’s boosters humming and chugging and doing all the other things that they should be doing to prepare for launch. Of course Kate never bothered with details like that. She just knew that they were supposed to make noises and blow steam and smoke so obviously they did. Reaching the launchpad took some time, not necessarily because of the distance, but because everyone knew that astronauts had to walk funny " like they’d had a small accident but felt too embarrassed to tell anyone.
In her hand she carried her co-pilot, Softy. When she’d decided to do Astronauting, Kate had interviewed lots of ”˜people’ for the job of co-pilot, but Softy had won easily. After all she did have all her arms and legs, unlike Frog, and Skinny probably wasn’t even strong enough to lift her own helmet. Besides, she was the cuddliest and on long space journeys that was far more important than knowing how to drive a rocket or where the planets were.
They climbed up the ladder into the spaceship and sat down on their space seats. She had seen rockets on television but they were silly and their seats were all the wrong way round, so she had proper seats that stood up and had cushions. They carried out their pre-flight checks " drinks " check, biscuits " check, paper & pencils " check. It was only then that she noticed that the Head of Mission Control was actually already there and was curled up asleep in the corner, purring contentedly. Glad that all her team was together, Kate fired up the engines and after much shaking they left the ground and soon the earth was far below them. They reached Space quickly, due to Kate feeling dizzy after making all the engine noises without stopping for breath.
"Set the arty-pilot, please Softy" said Captain Kate
"For Planet Alawallawaskey, of course" she said in response to a strange look from her co-pilot.
Once the ship was heading on it’s set course, then there was nothing else to do but eat the snacks and play noughts & crosses, which Kate seemed to win everytime, funnily enough. A beeping noise caught her attention.
"We’re here!" Kate said excitedly
Kate never bothered with landing, as she was always too interested watching the planet and all the funny people and animals running around below them.
"Look at that one with all those legs"she laughed,"and those orange ones that look like crabs".
Just then a voice came over the radio.
"Time for bed, Captain Kate"
"Awwwww" replied Kate. "Just 5 more minutes, pleeease"
"Bedtime, Kate" came the stern reply
"This planet is boring anyway" she grunted.
So Captain Kate and Softy flew quickly back to Earth where the Deputy Head of Mission Control awaited them with the special space paste they needed to get rid of those nasty alien mouth bugs.