An Emirates flight, this time, the dusk-dark ceiling seamed with false stars. Beneath you, the airbus—an older model, a little threadbare at the wings—thrums with complaints, dissatisfied with the double standards imposed by its makers: a pilot is permitted to retire, his plane is condemned to scrap. How fair is that?

Different species, you explain. The aircraft twitches and heaves, petulant. A smooth voice rolling over the intercom, apologising for the sudden turbulence. Unfair, the airbus announces, this time with a jolt, even as you settle cross-legged on its worn carpet. Yes, you tell it. Yes, you know. You get it.

To your surprise, it is all it takes: that brief connection. The commercial liner quiets, grumbling, its mutterings indistinguishable from the drone of its engines. You sigh. You pat its hull and wonder what it might have been like for train-priests. You heard the myths. Of how old country gods rode the devout instead of the other way around. Of how their faithful burned from the divine coal fires, their soul lettered with the dreams of the rails.

You decide you have the better deal even if they might have had a better storyteller, a woman named Vernon, who spoke to seeds and children with equal gravitas.

A stewardess veers towards your hiding spot. The airbus distracts her, a light blinking on somewhere distant. As her footsteps fade, the plane speaks again, pressing into you: so where are you going?

You wince at the pressure that seeps in the cup of your skull, the ache that pincers your temples. It is not the leviathan’s fault that you are only human.

Home, you sigh, after you’ve gathered your composure. I suppose I’m going home.

You don’t sound like you anymore, or at least the you that existed before. You don’t act like her either. You are louder, wiser, brasher, harder, entirely unafraid, your edges razored by all the places you’ve lived, your accent a consortium of previous experiences.

You’re lonelier too but you don’t like talking about that part.

And besides, wasn’t that what made the planes open themselves to you?

Home.

The plane wraps itself around the word. It has heard it a million times before, longing decanted into a single syllable, heavy as the first drink after that last goodbye.

This is home, it tells you, threading you in satellite data. Home is flight paths and brief hours in the hangar, a legacy of radio signals, the conversation of pilots. Home is the air, blistering cold, and both the dawn and the dusk, burning gold. Home is here, it insists, with me and mine.