airplane: "About 1,060,000,000 results"

airplane crash: "About 68,300,000 results"

airplane death: 477 in 2019

bicycle death: 849 in 2019

car death: 36,096 in 2019; 640 in Oklahoma

Superman is right about flying in machines. "Statistically speaking, it's still the safest way to travel."

Husband wants to build an airplane. He wants to drive fly an airplane. He wants me to fly an airplane.

We built airships in Eorzea. We never rode in them. They were piloted by a mammet. If we wanted to fly, we had many flying mounts. They did not fall down and burn. Perhaps the airships would not fall down and burn either, since most of them used gasbags to be in the air.

So this is his latest project, or perhaps the project he has had for some time. We had projects in Eorzea that we worked on together, but we could also focus on our own. When he was focused on a project, I sometimes needed to remind him to notice me. He was usually willing to do that, and talk about his progress. Sometimes over food. Sometimes in bed.

But the projects in Eorzea were usually not the sorts of things that could kill us. Or, even if they did, we had our home point.

We do not yet know if we have a home point here. I do not know if I wish to find out by trying to fly an airplane.

I spent time walking around town, thinking about the project. It made me restless somehow. It was a very new thing for me. There are many things about it that are not things I know, and I think Husband does not know them well. When he tried to explain some of them he needed to teach me new words, and some of those words needed new words to explain them.

Yet not knowing things has so far meant learning about them. I have found I am good at learning about things. I think there are things I understand differently than Husband does; he seems to think this is a good thing because together we can understand them better. So simply not knowing things should not have bothered me.

Perhaps I should have talked about it with Husband, but this feeling came from talking with him, and I felt I needed to somehow think differently.

Googling "think differently" gave many results. A lot of them seem to do with business. I will perhaps look at these over time, but one of them mentioned "random stimuli" which seems to mean seeing or hearing or doing lots of different things to make new thoughts come. So I walked around town looking for new things.

The library felt too quiet for new things. The thrift store often has different things, but they are still different types of the same thing. May's market had nothing that was new to me, though I did buy some pork rinds.

When I got near the Pit I remembered Sam's offer, that I could talk to him, even if he did not understand me. I supposed that meant I would more be talking at him than to him. But at that point it would be something different to do, so I went in to talk at Sam.

Sam has gotten used to my typing at the bar. We greeted each other, he brought me a Coke as I set down the laptop, and I typed all this before engaging him.

Now it is time to engage him.

"So what's tonight's big-think topic?

"Airplanes."

"Airplanes?"

"My husband wants to build one."

"O...kay. Why?"

"He says we do not need a license to fly one."

"Oh, like one o' them, uh...micro...para..."

"Ultralight."

"Ultralight. Sure. So, yer lookin' up parts an' stuff?"

"No, he is doing that. I am..." I was staring at the words on my screen, scrolling up and down the page. "...concerned."

"Cuz he's got a hobby?"

"Because he has a hobby that could kill him."

"Hm. S'pose it could. Y'know, don't take this the wrong way, but y'all face down bears an' gators an' guys with guns. Kinda made me think y'ain't afraid o' anything."

"I...am not...it is not..."

Perhaps it was. I needed to think about it. Sam polished a glass.

"When we were...on deployment, we had our jobs. It was what we did and what we thought about. We charged into battle, we breached enemy strongholds, we deposed tyrants..."

"Tyrants?"

"There were tyrants. We deposed them."

Sam shrugged and gestured at me to continue.

"We knew we could die. We did not want to die. If the danger was too great, we would run, and plan better, and try again. But we did not think about dying. We thought about the job. We did the job. Over and over.

"Now, since coming here, I learn of people dying in...stupid ways. Car crashes. Bad food. Falling down. Dying in ways that are not brave or heroic or even useful...ways that could happen to...anyone. I have thought more about dying since coming here than I ever did on deployment."

I looked at Sam. "And now my husband wants to fling himself into the air in a machine of his making that can fall down and burn. I am...concerned."

"Gotcha. Want me to try an' talk him out of it?"

"I do not think you can. It is something he truly wants to do. And his reasons are good...we need to be able to travel, and the airplane he talks about will let us."

"Okay, but there's, like, buses, trains, commercial airlines..."

"We need materials that may be hard to reach. We have equipment we cannot repair, so we need to be able to make new equipment. We can make steel, but we would like better. We have not yet found mythril..."

"Mythril? Like, Lord of the Rings mythril?"

"What is Lord of the Rings?"

Sam stared at me. "...It's a book."

The Lord of the Rings: "an epic high-fantasy novel by English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkein."

"high fantasy": "a subgenre of fantasy defined by the epic nature of its setting or by the epic stature of its characters, themes or plot."

"fantasy": "a genre of speculative fiction involving magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore."

"speculative fiction": "a broad category of fiction encompassing genres with elements that do not exist in reality, recorded history, nature, or the present universe."

"Perhaps I will read it."

He continued to stare at me. I wondered if I had confused or upset a hyur. I tried to change his focus. "So do you know anyone who knows about airplanes?"

He blinked. "Uh...none o' the regulars. Maybe there's someone round who does crop dustin' or hobby flyin'..."

"Do you think, once my husband has built his airplane, if someone can find out if it works well?"

"What, like a test pilot?" Sam chuckled. "You want someone else to crash an' burn b'fore he does?"

My stomach felt strange. I realized that, yes, that was exactly what I wanted. "Is it bad to want that?"

"'S'understandable. Can't say's I see anyone volunteerin' for it, though."

"Then perhaps someone who knows about airplanes can...look at ours to see if it is made correctly?"

"Safety check. Sure, that's somethin' you can get people to do."

"Thank you, Sam. I feel much better now."

"Any time."

I closed the laptop and got up to leave.

"Miz Tsu'na?"

I turned back to him.

"Y'ain't really from around here, are you?"

"I was not raised in Oklahoma, no."

"Nah, I mean..." His words seemed to be stuck inside him. "...Sure, okay. Have a good one."

I smiled for him and left.

Perhaps Husband can tell me what I should have said.