Paper Planes Back Home
Published on February 21, 2015
by Tara Frejas
Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Fantasy, Romance
by Tara Frejas
Genre: Contemporary Fiction, Fantasy, Romance
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Synopsis
When
Gianna wakes up on a cloud, she is disoriented yet fascinated. She thinks she's
only dreaming until she gets a storm of paper planes—"They're thoughts of
people who remember," a man on another cloud tells her—each pleading for
her not to leave. The man tells her these planes are the key to get out of
there, and while she thinks it's hard to believe, she decides everything is
worth trying if it meant finding her way back home.
Excerpt
Skylar recognizes the grief,
the denial on the newcomer’s face while he watches her unfold each paper plane
and read the messages—the thoughts—sent her way.
“I need to go
back,” she murmurs, finally breaking the silence between them. “I can’t stay
here.”
“I tell that to
myself often,” he says. His tone is calm, as though already resigned to his
inevitable fate. And then he smiles. It’s the reassuring kind, one that makes
her smile at him in return. “There is always a way.” He takes a small step to
the side and glances behind him, jerks his thumb toward what she initially
thought of as a paper sculpture, and says, “Ride back home.”
Her eyes narrow in
curiosity. “What?”
“I’ve seen it
before,” Skylar says. He drops on his cloud and sits comfortably until he’s
poised to tell her a story. “There was an old man here. Sam,” he begins,
pointing to empty space to his left. It’s only then that she takes the time to
look around. Not that there’s much to see aside from the beautiful expanse of
blue hues as far as her eyes can see.
“Might’ve been
about fifty. Said he suffered a stroke while tending his garden.”
The brunette
stares blankly at the space Skylar gestured to, and then she turns to him.
“Where is he now?”
“He’s gone back
home.”
The look on her
face is quizzical.
“Home,” Skylar
says with a smile. “What do you think of when you hear the word home?
There is a word in
her head, just one. A name she doesn’t utter, but one that’s always brought
about a familiar, warm feeling—like gentle morning sunlight against her skin.
“Anyway. You’d be
surprised what those paper planes can do,” he continues. His voice is bright
and encouraging, and she wonders how he could be so. She has only been sitting
on her cloud for—How long have I been
here, again?—a short while, and she already feels miserable. She wants to
go back home. “That guy, he’s had
millions of paper planes fly to him every single waking hour . . . It was an
amazing sight, I tell you.”
“How long have you
been here?”
He stops, the
question taking away a shade of cheer from his face. He doesn’t seem to know
the answer either. “A while.”
“Why don’t you go
back home?”
Another shade of
cheer gone, and she feels sorry she asked.
“I don’t get
enough paper planes,” he replies with a shrug. There’s a short, uncertain pause
that transpires between them—one unsure if she should ask why, and the other
unwilling to reveal any more of his misery—before he finally says, “And that’s
that.”
Without warning, a
loud swishing sound is heard around them again, and a bunch of paper planes
emerge out of nowhere. Skylar only watches as they all fall on the other’s
cloud, and they exchange glances for a while. He sees the sorry flicker in her
eyes, and he smiles. “It’s okay.”
She seems
reluctant to unfold a plane, but when she looks back up at him, she sees a
paper plane drop on his lap.
The look on his
face is inexplicable.
“Someone thought
of you,” she points out, feeling an ounce of hope for this man in front of her.
Skylar swallows a
lump in his throat. Could it be—Jeannie,
have you found me? He unfolds the paper plane quickly, brows knitting
together when he sees a handwriting he couldn’t identify.
Be strong,
soldier.
About the Author
Author Links
Tara
Frejas is a cloud-walker who needs caffeine to fuel her travels. By day, she
works in project management and events, and she writes down her daydreams at
night. She began publishing fiction for public consumption in 2004, posting her
pieces on various online channels like fan forums and Blogspot, eventually
exploring other avenues like Livejournal, Soomp!, Tumblr, and most recently,
Wattpad.
Aside
from her obvious love affair with words and persistent muses, Tara is very
passionate about being caffeinated, musical theatre, certain genres of music,
dancing, dogs, good food, and romancing Norae, her ukelele. She owns a
6-month-old male bunny named Max who sometimes tries to nibble on her writing
notes.
Paper Planes Back Home is her first novel.
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