Vignette 22

The youngest child in a family of five sat in the back seat of their six-seat airplane on its way south. The lull of the propeller and the distant non-descript landscape allowed her mind to wander. As the airplane increased in altitude, her father put on his oxygen mask, while the others had to endure the forfeit of the thinning air. The youngest fell asleep within ten minutes. The middle child fell asleep in thirteen minutes. The eldest held on to her wakefulness by reading a comic book for twenty one minutes. Meanwhile, their father, the pilot, put the airplane into auto pilot. Soon thereafter, his co-pilot, their mother, had drifted into a string of light dreams. Without knowing that his air-mask was defunct, the pilot fell asleep, last of all. Together, they shared a flight of mild dreams for forty five minutes, in the tiny capsule suspended in air, 15,000 feet above the ground. After that period of time, a minor span of turbulence woke them all. When he regained his bearings, the pilot maneuvered the airplane closer to the earth where the ample oxygen would no longer threaten to seize their consciousnesses.