Fly High

 

    48 – Joke

 

    David thought that they did pretty well, in the grand scheme of things.

    Romana disagreed.

    Dust swirled up around David’s legs when he finally touched down on the ledge, heart joining his stomach in his boots. He waved Freefall off absentmindedly. The pterandon squawked at him and left him to his rare fit of post-flight blues. He hadn’t flown with such a lack of co-ordination since he first left the training room and it cut him to think he was so unfocussed. A wisp of gold fluttered in his mind’s eye like a pendant. David swallowed, feeling suddenly choked by his flight jacket’s fitted collar.

    ASL DeLar’s debrief went straight over his head. The few words he caught held an uncomfortable echo of Oonu’s when David refused Gideon’s Leap. Romana’s stiff back and jaw, on the other hand, told David she was taking every word to heart—and not enjoying it. Her shoulders drew in as DeLar rounded off by telling them evalutions would be delivered tomorrow.

    At the cliff side of the ledge, Oskrim and Sorba had arrived for their assessment—Oskrim looked nervously excited, like a colt champing at the bit. Sorba, stolid as ever, only looked determined. DeLar didn’t look at them, but David suspected he was aware of their presence. It was that inexplicable sixth sense teachers, parents and sergeants had. Like a shark, as David’s scary third-grade teacher used to claim. Maybe DeLar sensed a disturbance in the Force or something.

    In any case, he gave them one last stern look-over, his furrowed scar shiny beside the unmarked skin, and dismissed them. David nodded mechanically.  

    As soon as DeLar moved off, Romana tore off her helm.

    “Are you having some kind of lark?” she hissed at David.

    He blinked. “Wha—No! Why would you say that?”

    “Is this some kind of joke at my expense? You don’t want me as a wingmate so much you’re actually sabotaging our performance?”

    “I am not ‘sabotaging our performance’. I was flying the best I could. Romana—”

    She pivoted on her heel and started for the tack room.

    David grabbed her arm before he could stop himself. The blonde cadet swung around, blue eyes fierce. David’s fingers loosened as he caught himself before faltering. It was done; there was no turning back. He was highly aware of DeLar less than twenty feet away. The ASL was an old friend of Romana’s; doubtless if he thought David was hassling her… The dolphinback had won a hard battle against the council to let him back into the Corps when they thought he was pugnacious influence. They had finally backed off. Making a scene would stir up a whole lot of drama David didn’t need.

    “Why are you so angry?” he demanded quietly of Romana. “That was our first time flying together. We’re going to be rough for a while. Just until we get the hang of it.”

    “You don’t understand. I can fly better than that—we. We can fly better than that. We should be able to fly better than that.”

    Something plaintive in her tone caught David off-guard. She tugged gently on her arm. This time it slipped free without resistance.

    “If we can’t,” she said, “we might as well not be flying at all. It’s… it’s just… Ugh.” Gathering her saddle, she ran down the stairs.

    David wondered if he should give her some time to cool off. But that voice—he’d heard the tone before: half anger, half hopelessness. It was the tone his mother used to use when railing about his father. At the time, she’d been so torn between hurt at being abandoned and rage at being treated so badly she’d spent half the time crying in the armchair in her bedroom and the rest angrily scratching pages out of her doctorate. In her case, David’s aunt had come in, cooled his mother’s head, and helped her get back on her feet. Two years after that she finished the doctorate and Frank Scott was finally allowed regular visitation rights.

    The saddle was beginning to weigh down his arm; he flipped it over a shoulder. His mother had just needed someone to tell her it was going to be all right and show her the way back to herself. Perhaps Romana was in a similar situation.

    David decided to heed a bit of advice his errant father had once given him: never let the sun set on a woman’s anger.

     He followed her.