She'd been granted a wish, and so the next thing I knew she was in my field looking to see it fulfilled. This was when I was earning a little extra flying folk around in a biplane, and maybe she'd heard about it through Louis somehow, as I couldn't think of anyone else who we still both knew in common. And now here she was walking towards me: Louis's aunt Annie. She looked much the same as I remembered her from my childhood, dark wavy hair and dark wide eyes, and the kind of skin that'd make me think of swimming in a pool of melting milk chocolate ... I was standing in the morning shadow of the plane when she came up right before me and told me her wish. Afterwards, I started making excuses. I pointed to the sky and I pointed to the ground. I shook my head. I picked up a tuft of grass and threw it in the air and then showed her my extra unsteady hands and said to touch them to see how cold they were and mentioned the sorry state of my cuticles. Next I tried to convince that I had suddenly misplaced my license and that lately the authorities were especially on the lookout for my kind of pilot. And when that didn't work I showed her the holes in my boots and asked her how could she possibly trust a man with such big holes in his boots. And shrugged my shoulders. But she was a persistent, ageless aunt Annie, she just couldn't be discouraged. And to prove to me, I suppose, just how much she wished to fly, Annie started running around the field in all directions, flapping her outstretched arms, propelling herself forward, ascending, turning, hovering, dipping, diving, and levelling out. All in all miming an aeroplane with considerable ease. Actually she was doing it so well that she soon lost all sense of time somewhere along the line as the act of controlling her plane and maintaining its course was proving to be a much greater need for her attention than anything else. And still she continued on with her manoeuvres, increasing her speed, checking her dials and gauges. Then climbing a little higher, she leveled out again, before deciding to perform some more acrobatics, pursuing each task with all the available resources at her disposal, both within and without. Now here she came again, diving, looping, twirling, swirling. Then she cut the engine, hovered midair a moment and stared into the sun, the orange light transfixing her till she realized she could no longer see anything else but the orange light, and nothing could be heard anymore, no, nothing at all but the orange light, and nothing could be felt anymore, no, nothing at all but the orange light. Then suddenly her arms dropped to her side and she stopped. I thought that she must have finally tired herself out, and was glad that she'd managed to have her wish, even if it mightn't have been what she would have imagined at the start. So I decided to leave her there in the field a while, turned and slowly walked away, thinking of breakfast.
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