The Princess and the Pilot

1215 Words3 Pages

Eve felt something soft, sharp, and icy cold touching against her cheek. When she tried to move and realized she couldn’t, she figured that she was either frozen solid or buried deep beneath a thick layer of heavy snow. Her body was so numb from the bitter cold that she couldn’t tell whether anything was pressing down on it.
She tried to remember how long she’d been out. Had she been knocked unconscious...No. No, then she remembered. She’d been sleeping, in the balloon. But how had she ended up on the ground?
But before she could come up with any sort of an answer, she heard someone cry her name, and in an instant she was scooped up from the snowy ground she had been laying upon. “Eva,” she heard a voice say. It was full of relief, and she recognized it instantly.
“M-Momma?” Not realizing they’d been shut this whole time, she opened her eyes. She was seated in her mother’s lap, between a handful of pine trees whose tops extended beyond their vision, into the blur of the endless blizzard that was raging around them. “What...”
“It’s alright,” her mother said. She was doing her best to console her, even though Eve could tell she was just as worried. “I’m sorry...It was only a little accident. Everything’s alright now.” She smiled down at her, putting as much into it as she could. “Are you alright?”
“I...I guess so.” Eve shivered. “I’m...cold, though...”
“I know. Come here.” Her mother took her in her arms and held her tight against her, so that Eve could hear her heart thumping rhythmically in her chest. But even there, in what was usually the warmest and safest place to her, she only felt more frightened and afraid.
“W-What’s gonna...What’s gonna happen to us?” She couldn’t keep herself from trembling. “I...

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...r. “Are there stars where you grew up?”
“Why, I believe there are,” her mother said. “More than you could ever count in one night. I used to watch them so many times, when I was young.”
“Can we...” Eve hesitated. “Can we...watch them, together, when we get there?”
“Of course. We’ll go up higher than ever before, and we’ll stay out and watch them all night long, if you like.”
Eve must have drifted off soon after that - she began to stir what must have been a long while later, the blanket of pine needles covering the ground pressing into her cheek. She remembered seeing someone push a branch aside and shout her name, and next thing she knew she was being carried through the blizzard on horseback, in the arms of a knight in shining armor. She figured she must have been dreaming, and she was too tired and disoriented to say anything during the encounter.

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