Chapter Five
Explaining Time...
(part 4)


    The agents were gathered in a large airport, seeing each other off on their various missions. Landon and Con did their best to check their bags before they passed them in but there seemed to be a small dispute over whether peanut butter would actually make it through the checkpoints or not…..
Damian put an arm over Elliea’s shoulders and steered her through the crowd as the chatter of their team surrounded them on all sides. “Are you sure you should go on your own mission?” He touched her bandaged shoulder.
She shrugged and moved away a tiny bit. “I’m fine. I’ve had much worse in the past. You know I handled myself just fine in Lancaster with that really bad gunshot wound.”
Damian shrugged and rubbed the back of his head. “I mean...I know….but, well, I guess I’m just a little overprotective after the last team mission we had.”
Elliea’s shoulders drooped as grief washed over her. “Hey, I thought we talked about this.”
Damian grimaced, “We decided to come back to it.”
Elliea sighed, “We really do need to come back to it....”
He waved a hand, “Can we not right now though? I don’t want to get that deep while we’re trying to say goodbye.”
She shrugged, “Fine, I won’t forget it though.”
He gave a short laugh, “Ha, I know you don’t. I’m going to miss you. Call me okay?” He grabbed her in a big hug farewell hug and she winced a little but hugged him back before looking into his face with concern. “Hey, don’t let yourself get down while I’m not around to talk you out of it okay?”
He smiled sadly and opened his mouth as if to say something then just sighed. She tilted her head, “What?”
Damian laughed awkwardly and rubbed her head, “Nothing, forget it. Have a safe trip.”
A small disruption nearby got louder as a three security guards started to get heated over several jars of peanut butter and Landon and Conner debated that they should get to keep them.
King was trying his best to calm both sides down but they were beyond listening. Finally after a 20 minute delay Con and Landon were forced to give up the peanut butter and final goodbye hugs began.


Cont....

Chapter Six
Plain plane in the plains
(part 1)


    Elliea rubbed her bare feet together and shifted her position in the semi uncomfortable plane seat. She reread a chapter of her work then changed a few words out before taking a break to sip water from her bottle.
As she screwed the cap back she glanced around. Since she wrote with her sound deadening headphones on and the music at top volume she often was blind to people around her.
Sure enough a young man was standing next to her chair with an expectant look on his face. She quickly whipped her headphones off, “Sorry I didn’t hear anything if you were talking to me!"
The guy has chestnut hair of an average length, a strong jaw, street clothes, and green eyes. He smiled and lifting his hands sent off several rapid fire gestures. They seemed to be sign language, with which Elliea had only a small knowledge of.
She frowned slightly, “Wait go slower please.”
The guy repeated them but this time much slowed down. She picked out that he wanted to know if she was going to get off when the plane touched down or connect with a different flight.
Elliea was immediately alert. “Why do you want to know?”
The man rubbed his neck awkwardly before signing his response. It seemed that he was looking for someone to help him communicate because this was his first time flying and non of the flight personnel knew sign language.
Elliea swept him with a cool and serious gaze, trying to read if he was a threat. Then asked suspiciously, “How did you know I knew sign language….”
He blushed hotly and looked sheepish before replying that he had seen her take an online class of moderate difficulty on her laptop an hour ago. He then apologize for snooping and admitted that it had taken him that whole hour to work up the nerve to ask her for help.
Elliea could detect no lie in his eyes and allowed him to move into the window seat next to her before asking for the details of his trip. He was going to the same airport as her but needed to catch a bus out of that city for another 57 miles so she decided to help him. They then got to talking about casual stuff in halting, patchy communication.

Cont...