Crash (Inspired by Millennium Photo)

It’s rare for everyone to survive a plane crash. It’s eerily rare. Impossible even. After we crash landed into the sea, everyone swam to the shore. Some were dragged. Some were injured, but after the chaos died down and the pilot took roll, it was evident that we all survived. Every passenger. Every stewardess. Every single one of us.

I stood on a lump of sand, clutching my doll to by chest. The air was salty, as the tide washed up wreckage of the plane. My father stood beside me, his toes bloody. He had taken me into his arms and he plunged for the shore, his feet scraping against sharp shards of metal, and rough tropical rocks.

I watched with awe as the sand turned a cold crimson around my father's feet. There were two doctors on the plane, both in their early forties, and married to each other. They were a cute couple but with seemingly opposite personalities. My father's injuries were minor, he was toward the end of a moderately long line to be inspected for infections by one of the two.

By nightfall, my father and I were sitting on the sand around a fire with the rest of the castaways. I sat on his lap and stared vacantly at the makeshift-masking tape bandaged toes. I ran my fingers through my doll’s headful of sandy yarn. I began pulling her red locks into a long braid, slowly going strand by strand. I attracted the attention of a little girl with pigtails. She was much younger than me. Her wide brown eyes watched me diligently as I patiently braided my dolls hair.

In that moment I was very content. Too content for the trauma that I had went through that day. It was as if I was just sitting in the waiting room at the dentists office, without a care in the world.

I didn’t even feel blessed.

I was too young to know what that feeling was.

End~