Mile-High Malediction
—————————————————————————————————--ASCENT—————————————————————————————————-
Priya burst onto the Boeing 747, her backpack slapping against blue aisle seats while she ducked and searched the rows. Good—he wasn't there. While each passenger had scanned their boarding passes, she'd already scanned them with facial-recognition trauma, searching for the saffron monstrosity.
Sun Country Airlines. She'd never even heard of them before. Good, he probably hadn't either. American had been a disaster last time, literally.
She finally reached her seat, 29F. Fitting, really, in more ways than one. Heaving a sigh of relief, she threw her bag on the ground and thrust her boots into the chair ahead of her. The guy in front got a rush of leather and trendy goth perfume.
But then—he came. A mumbling, trembling Buddhist monk shuffled onto the aircraft after a flight attendant squealed at him to get off the sky bridge. Shen-Yun chanted prayers under his breath, eyes twitching under half-shut lids as he crept forward, one careful step at a time.
When Priya saw those terrible saffron robes, she froze. PTSD surged through her bloodstream—instincts taking over.
She let out a war cry. Shen-Yun broke from his meditation and shrieked. "That witch! That terrible witch!"
She sprang from her seat, scrambling over limbs and tray tables, eyes locked on the enemy. He stumbled back, fumbling under his robes. First came a cross, then a necklace of onions and garlic. He started hurling Arabic curses he didn't understand.
The teachings of Gautama had always fallen deaf on her ears. But he came prepared with new tactics. The "beginner's mind" and all. Priya bared her nails and prepared to lunge.
Their fateful encounter, however, was thwarted by a very large man who urgently needed to pee. They popped their heads around either side of him, spitting wild accusations at each other. The man looked extremely uncomfortable.
"Get away from me, stalker!" Priya yelped.
"Begone, demon!" Shen-Yun cried.
"You want some of this?!"
Eventually flight attendants shoved them back to their seats—conveniently on opposite sides of the same row.
Six planes. Six plane crashes. After one, maybe two, you just count yourself lucky to survive. But after a few? You start noticing patterns. And for Priya and Shen-Yun, that pattern was always each other.
The investigators always had no answers. They were quiet, suspiciously quiet. And so conspiracy theories were allowed to develop.
Priya was convinced that Shen-Yun was obsessed with her. Or maybe just a very persistent terrorist. Shen-Yun was certain Priya was a demon sent by Mara to block his path to enlightenment.
They were both only partially right. Priya glared at Shen-Yun with bloodlust. Shen-Yun peered back, eyes watering. But under the surface—just barely—their eyes held a glimmer of softness. For better or for worse, they were the most consistent forces in each other's lives.
"I called ICE on you last week, you freak," Priya beamed.
"I know," Shen-Yun replied. "That why I had to take this flight."
"Yeah? Well, you called an exorcist on me."
"Because your soul still needs saving."
The other passengers could only gaze in confused horror as Priya and Shen-Yun scrunched their faces at each other like mad children. Mercifully, the standoff ended when the flight attendants began their usual safety spiel.
Priya and Shen-Yun didn't need those tips. "Put your mask on before helping others." Oh, Please. In six crashes, not a single person did anything else. "The emergency exits are located—" They knew. Oh, they knew.
They braced for the impact they knew was coming, already planning their next move. But as they stared out their respective windows, they each gave the same bright smile.
————————————————————————————————--DESCENT—————————————————————————————————--
When the plane came crashing down, Shen-Yun was the first at the emergency exit. Another passenger tumbled past as the aircraft "experienced turbulence." Still, Shen-Yun stood resolute, silently snatching a parachute.
As they passed over an island, he motioned toward the door. The flight attendants—frantic, barely keeping it together—nodded back, sheepishly. He flung it open and vanished without a word, diving like a Navy SEAL on a mission.
No one had ever died in these crashes. In fact, no plane had even been seriously damaged. Water rescues were just really annoying and tedious.
He didn’t scream. He didn’t flinch. He just stared down the island throughout his descent. Only when he deployed the parachute did he finally let himself breathe.
Seventh crash. But finally—a land rescue. He'd been taking skydiving lessons just for this moment.
He looked up, smug and satisfied—barely noticing the black dot on the horizon. Wait. It was growing now. Too big. Oh god.
Priya swooped down like a hawk, bearing down with the weight of a thousand suns. Of course she'd let that monk handle all the logistics—it gave her more time to plot revenge.
She dove for Shen-Yun. He'd been calm throughout the entire crash—just an ordinary Tuesday. Now he slapped his face. Stammering. Bracing.
Just barely, he dodged in time. But as their parachute strings wove together—she charged yet again. Somehow, Shen-Yun evaded once more, like a splendid matador.
But as their parachutes wrapped more tightly, they began losing altitude. Frantic, they thrashed in opposite directions, trying to escape. But every move only tightened the threads in an endless loop. Ironic.
They tumbled onto the beach together.
Shen-Yun groaned, sliding across the sand. "Crazy witch!"
Priya smiled, eyes bloodshot. She started to rise in shaky bursts, like pain was fuel and defiance was oxygen. No room for mercy. He noticed—and scrambled upright, panic flickering behind his eyes.
His quick, sharp tug on the threads yanked Priya down, flat against the sand. The air slammed from her lungs. She blinked in disbelief, then glared up at him like he'd just declared war.
"So what's your deal, huh?" She screamed. "Why are you chasing me?"
"Me?" Shen-Yun laughed. "I want you gone! You chase me!"
For some reason, Priya glanced down at the sand. Her eyes softened, almost meek. She wasn't sure why. Maybe it was the exhaustion. Or maybe it was the way his voice cracked.
Noticing the shift, Shen-Yun deflated. "You come from air...like flying ninja. Like Predator."
She laughed, regaining her footing. "Oh yeah?" She pounced on him, unleashing her full wrath. Biting into his shoulder as he cried out.
Loosening her grip momentarily, she winked. "What am I now?"
"Like cheetah! Ah! Incisors sharp, like jaguar..."
Shen-Yun reached into his secret pouch and flung salt at her eyes, warding off evil.
"What the f—" Sand blinded her before she could finish.
"That's what you get, demon!"
She turned away, gasping through tears and reddened eyes. She jolted away, trudging as far from him as possible.
"I'm sorry," he blurted, chasing after her. His face hit the ground as she started running, tugging the threads that bound them.
When Shen-Yun's dead weight came tumbling down, so too did Priya. Again. They rolled in agony, facing each other.
They tussled a few more times in the wet sand, drenching themselves in kelp and sea-salt. Finally, they resigned themselves as amber sunset hues appeared on the horizon.
———————————————————————————————--TOUCH-DOWN——————————————————————————————--
Priya buried her face in the sand, but Shen-Yun still heard her faint, lonely weeping. He inched closer—this time, without disturbing their tangled threads. "I'm sorry," he whispered.
"I know," Priya said, hiding tears. "You already said." She gazed at the horizon. "I am too."
"No," Shen-Yun insisted. "Maybe my fault. Maybe all my fault."
"Huh?" Priya retorted. "It's not. No matter how many times I blame you."
"I don't know..." Shen-Yun muttered. He thought of the cedar planks, the quiet water of his monastery. Still. Silent. Peaceful. But no room—not for anything else. Not for his childhood toys. Not for anything beyond his robe.
"I don't think I want this to end," he confessed.
"I knew it, stalker." Priya couldn't hold back an awkward smile. Like Shen-Yun, her thoughts drifted to home—that cramped Manhattan studio. Or at least, she called it a home. It was packed with achievements and expensive ceramic pots.
"Me neither," she whispered.
"Maybe that's why..." Shen-Yun squeaked, looking at the tangled mess between them. "Exactly why we stuck."
Priya nodded. "So how do we get unstuck?"
"Maybe we try...this," he muttered, starting to untangle the threads. The words hung in his throat. "How your relationship with your mother?"
Priya burst out laughing. Was he serious?
He wasn't filling the silence.
Oh God, he was.
"Pretty shit," she said finally. "How about you?"
"Don't know. She gave me up to monastery. Not enough money."
"Oh..." she replied, quiet now. "I'm glad you still have that community, though. Probably is nice."
"Not my choice to be a monk," Shen-Yun replied coldly.
"What?"
"Yeah."
"Why don't you stop then?"
"Know nothing else. Have no one else," Shen-Yun answered blankly. "Not like you."
Priya lay silent, considering what to say. She reached for the tangled mess he was unraveling and began to help.
"If it's any consolation...having a mom isn't always what it's cracked up to be."
"How so?" Shen-Yun asked.
"Sometimes they hurt you. Sometimes it's better to detach," Priya let the words fall.
"Ah. Maybe not so bad," Shen-Yun reassured. "Buddha say attachment keeps us tethered. To plane of suffering."
They glanced at each other, eyes widening.
"Yeah," Priya broke the silence. "My mom used to say the same thing."
"Really?"
"She used to say it was a man's world. And if we women wanted to succeed, we had no use for 'unnecessary' things like attachment," Priya stared vacantly. "Or love."
Before the memories could sour her mood, Shen-Yun interrupted. "Mom crazy," he said, cracking a smile.
"Now you're getting it," Priya chuckled.
They talked for hours about mundane things—like family and dreams. And life. Every time one was locked, the other happened to be key. Strangely interconnected, their collective wisdom was uncanny.
They even used it for absurd causes. Came this close to cracking JFK’s assassination—before one of them got sidetracked by a childhood memory. Lucky for them, though—because they were being watched.
The agencies monitoring them breathed a collective sigh of relief.
When they finally untangled the mess of threads, the full moon shone over the ocean, glistening in their eyes as they listened to rumbling waves and watched flickering stars.
They could remove their harnesses now. Out came those saffron robes that had traumatized Priya. But in the moonlight, Shen-Yun looked different—more handsome than she remembered.
And Priya? Looking at her black leather jacket and lustrous wavy hair, Shen-Yun realized "witch" might not be the best descriptor. Perhaps temptress.
"So...if you didn't want to be a monk," Priya asked, "what did you want to become?"
"Dancer," Shen-Yun gleamed confidently.
Priya erupted into laughter again. "I can never predict you."
"Why laugh?" Shen-Yun shrank, face reddening. "Dancing beautiful...like crane. Like majestic butterfly, fluttering through the wind."
Priya extended her hand. "Show me what you got, hot stuff," she smirked.
By this point, the feds had arrived. Even arranged an inter-agency truce. But they were too invested in the plot to interfere.
Shen-Yun struck a dramatic pose and tapped through the sand, taking her hand. She tried to reciprocate but trembled from the crash landing's whiplash.
Shen-Yun caught her immediately. Priya put her arms around him as he held her waist. They danced slowly under the glistening moonlight, always leaving respectable room for Siddhartha—until.
Priya collapsed into his chest, clutching those ugly saffron robes. The tears came out hard and sudden as she clenched him tightly. Shen-Yun gripped back, body frozen at first, instincts kicking in. He wrapped his arms around her like she might disappear.
They held each other as if their entire worlds were in the palms of their hands.
"I'll see you again, right?"
Shen-Yun held the back of her head as he whispered into her ears. "Fate won't have any other way. Always."
They smiled, loosening their grip—only to melt even deeper into each other's hold. They held each other peacefully now, savoring each other's warmth.
They would never see each other again.
—————————————————————————————————--LIFT-OFF————————————————————————————————--
Decades passed. Bones aged.
Priya could barely keep herself upright these days. She'd lived a full life—even tried out a marriage or two. But no matter how many years passed, part of her never forgot that moonlit beach, his soft saffron robe.
The truth had come crashing down after that seventh, fateful flight. The media framed it as classic bureaucratic incompetence. The President looked bad—which he'd been really trying to avoid.
Turns out, the FBI had long suspected Shen-Yun was a Chinese psy-op. The CIA, however, was convinced Priya had ties to Muslim extremists. She was Hindu.
The usual story happened. Agencies sabotaged each other, fiery emails flew, and Thanksgivings were ruined. Top officials panicked over the optics—especially the racial ones.
Redactions never seemed to get rid of them.
Everything got swept under the rug—until ICE tried to play hero. Priya's call had tipped them off.
They couldn't understand why no one had tried deportation.
After it all came out, Priya's ex reached out, saying he wanted to try again. She should've said no, but she was lonely. He was jealous of Shen-Yun.
Eventually, he told her to let him go.
Why not? Shen-Yun had already gone back to China, hating the spotlight. She’d apparently inspired him to find his mom.
But she was seventy-nine now. And Shen-Yun still hadn’t faded. Not even after years of PTSD therapy. Or all the therapists who warned her of trauma bonds.
She knew it was something else.
She just didn’t know why. Why she cared. Why it happened. Why she still felt a connection after fifty years.
She’d found comfort in her favorite cosmology programs. The universe apparently began with unusually low entropy—smooth, ordered, and inextricably bound. Until expansion flung it apart.
But some connections remained bound—despite expansion, despite chaos. Quantum entanglement, they called it. Particles forever linked across infinite space.
Like distance meant nothing. Like time meant nothing.
Eventually, in a haze of retirement boredom, she started leaving him voicemails. Years ago. The number was old. She never got a reply. But it calmed her—so she kept calling.
"I saw this amazing dance performance. You would have loved it. So beautiful, so majestic, fluttering through the wind," one rang.
Then, a week ago, a letter arrived. Saffron envelope. A name she didn't recognize.
A young monk wrote from Shen-Yun’s monastery. They’d apparently been telling stories of the “black-jacket witch” for years—debating her cosmic origin like scripture.
Priya chuckled in joyful disbelief, memories streaming back.
The story had gone cold—until Shen-Yun started getting her voicemails. He’d listened to every single one. The whole monastery caught him beaming for weeks.
He’d listened? Priya was too happy to take it personally. She turned the page.
The letter explained that by then, Shen-Yun had started chemotherapy. He didn’t want that to be the last chapter. So he made a plan to set things right.
Enclosed was an invitation to Shen-Yun’s funeral. He’d specifically asked for her, it said. Said it was “necessary.”
She was stunned. It had been decades. And yet, she couldn't help but grin.
She made plans to fly. Sun Country Airlines.
She strode into the monastery, walker in hand, her old leather jacket still slung across her shoulders. Monks murmured as she approached.
A child gasped. "The witch! The witch of legend!"
The monks led her inside and showed her photographs of Shen-Yun—beaming, teaching, dancing barefoot across temple floors. And after the memorial, they returned with a large saffron box.
"He left this for you, madam."
She opened it. Letters. Dozens—no, hundreds. Her hands opened the pages before her mind caught up.
His voice filled her with stupid joy. Absurd jokes filled the pages. About cheetahs. About cranes. About Predator.
The final letter was dated shortly before he died. The tone had changed.
He wrote that the monks believed they’d untangled their karmic threads on that moonlit beach. In their view, the Buddha would celebrate it—freedom from attachment.
The tale was done.
But not for him.
Not truly. He’d secretly hoped their paths would cross again. But fate never did its part.
But when he heard Priya’s first message, he made a choice: “what is unbound can be bound again.”
She read that line again and again.
He said their karma wasn’t settled. Not after all the voicemails, all the letters. He had one final request. Something insane to seal the deal.
He asked her to scatter his ashes.
She froze. Did she deserve this? Had she really known him?
But something fluttered. And she said yes.
So she went back. Back to the place—the time—she'd always longed to return to. The moonlit island was easier to find now, coated with modern development.
And on the beach where they'd once held each other, she scattered his ashes into the bubbling ocean. Alongside them rested the burnt remnants of her leather jacket and old plane tickets.
She started sobbing, as she began the ascent home. But then—laughter.
She thought back to the absurdity of it all. The plane crashes. The accusations. The tangled parachutes. The moment they finally stopped running.
And then it hit her. For an entire lifetime, she had wondered why. The Buddha had one answer. Her cosmology programs had another. But she realized it didn’t matter.
Because despite it all—here she was, on a ridiculous quest. Whatever the cosmic force, she was the one choosing it.
"Maybe… it was us," she grinned. "Maybe we've done this before. And maybe… we’ll do it again."
Priya burst onto the Boeing 747, her backpack slapping against blue aisle seats while she ducked and searched the rows. Good—he wasn't there. While each passenger had scanned their boarding passes, she'd already scanned them with facial-recognition trauma, searching for the saffron monstrosity.
Sun Country Airlines. She'd never even heard of them before. Good, he probably hadn't either. American had been a disaster last time, literally.
She finally reached her seat, 29F. Fitting, really, in more ways than one. Heaving a sigh of relief, she threw her bag on the ground and thrust her boots into the chair ahead of her. The guy in front got a rush of leather and trendy goth perfume.
But then—he came. A mumbling, trembling Buddhist monk shuffled onto the aircraft after a flight attendant squealed at him to get off the sky bridge. Shen-Yun chanted prayers under his breath, eyes twitching under half-shut lids as he crept forward, one careful step at a time.
When Priya saw those terrible saffron robes, she froze. PTSD surged through her bloodstream—instincts taking over.
She let out a war cry. Shen-Yun broke from his meditation and shrieked. "That witch! That terrible witch!"
She sprang from her seat, scrambling over limbs and tray tables, eyes locked on the enemy. He stumbled back, fumbling under his robes. First came a cross, then a necklace of onions and garlic. He started hurling Arabic curses he didn't understand.
The teachings of Gautama had always fallen deaf on her ears. But he came prepared with new tactics. The "beginner's mind" and all. Priya bared her nails and prepared to lunge.
Their fateful encounter, however, was thwarted by a very large man who urgently needed to pee. They popped their heads around either side of him, spitting wild accusations at each other. The man looked extremely uncomfortable.
"Get away from me, stalker!" Priya yelped.
"Begone, demon!" Shen-Yun cried.
"You want some of this?!"
Eventually flight attendants shoved them back to their seats—conveniently on opposite sides of the same row.
Six planes. Six plane crashes. After one, maybe two, you just count yourself lucky to survive. But after a few? You start noticing patterns. And for Priya and Shen-Yun, that pattern was always each other.
The investigators always had no answers. They were quiet, suspiciously quiet. And so conspiracy theories were allowed to develop.
Priya was convinced that Shen-Yun was obsessed with her. Or maybe just a very persistent terrorist. Shen-Yun was certain Priya was a demon sent by Mara to block his path to enlightenment.
They were both only partially right. Priya glared at Shen-Yun with bloodlust. Shen-Yun peered back, eyes watering. But under the surface—just barely—their eyes held a glimmer of softness. For better or for worse, they were the most consistent forces in each other's lives.
"I called ICE on you last week, you freak," Priya beamed.
"I know," Shen-Yun replied. "That why I had to take this flight."
"Yeah? Well, you called an exorcist on me."
"Because your soul still needs saving."
The other passengers could only gaze in confused horror as Priya and Shen-Yun scrunched their faces at each other like mad children. Mercifully, the standoff ended when the flight attendants began their usual safety spiel.
Priya and Shen-Yun didn't need those tips. "Put your mask on before helping others." Oh, Please. In six crashes, not a single person did anything else. "The emergency exits are located—" They knew. Oh, they knew.
They braced for the impact they knew was coming, already planning their next move. But as they stared out their respective windows, they each gave the same bright smile.
————————————————————————————————--DESCENT—————————————————————————————————--
When the plane came crashing down, Shen-Yun was the first at the emergency exit. Another passenger tumbled past as the aircraft "experienced turbulence." Still, Shen-Yun stood resolute, silently snatching a parachute.
As they passed over an island, he motioned toward the door. The flight attendants—frantic, barely keeping it together—nodded back, sheepishly. He flung it open and vanished without a word, diving like a Navy SEAL on a mission.
No one had ever died in these crashes. In fact, no plane had even been seriously damaged. Water rescues were just really annoying and tedious.
He didn’t scream. He didn’t flinch. He just stared down the island throughout his descent. Only when he deployed the parachute did he finally let himself breathe.
Seventh crash. But finally—a land rescue. He'd been taking skydiving lessons just for this moment.
He looked up, smug and satisfied—barely noticing the black dot on the horizon. Wait. It was growing now. Too big. Oh god.
Priya swooped down like a hawk, bearing down with the weight of a thousand suns. Of course she'd let that monk handle all the logistics—it gave her more time to plot revenge.
She dove for Shen-Yun. He'd been calm throughout the entire crash—just an ordinary Tuesday. Now he slapped his face. Stammering. Bracing.
Just barely, he dodged in time. But as their parachute strings wove together—she charged yet again. Somehow, Shen-Yun evaded once more, like a splendid matador.
But as their parachutes wrapped more tightly, they began losing altitude. Frantic, they thrashed in opposite directions, trying to escape. But every move only tightened the threads in an endless loop. Ironic.
They tumbled onto the beach together.
Shen-Yun groaned, sliding across the sand. "Crazy witch!"
Priya smiled, eyes bloodshot. She started to rise in shaky bursts, like pain was fuel and defiance was oxygen. No room for mercy. He noticed—and scrambled upright, panic flickering behind his eyes.
His quick, sharp tug on the threads yanked Priya down, flat against the sand. The air slammed from her lungs. She blinked in disbelief, then glared up at him like he'd just declared war.
"So what's your deal, huh?" She screamed. "Why are you chasing me?"
"Me?" Shen-Yun laughed. "I want you gone! You chase me!"
For some reason, Priya glanced down at the sand. Her eyes softened, almost meek. She wasn't sure why. Maybe it was the exhaustion. Or maybe it was the way his voice cracked.
Noticing the shift, Shen-Yun deflated. "You come from air...like flying ninja. Like Predator."
She laughed, regaining her footing. "Oh yeah?" She pounced on him, unleashing her full wrath. Biting into his shoulder as he cried out.
Loosening her grip momentarily, she winked. "What am I now?"
"Like cheetah! Ah! Incisors sharp, like jaguar..."
Shen-Yun reached into his secret pouch and flung salt at her eyes, warding off evil.
"What the f—" Sand blinded her before she could finish.
"That's what you get, demon!"
She turned away, gasping through tears and reddened eyes. She jolted away, trudging as far from him as possible.
"I'm sorry," he blurted, chasing after her. His face hit the ground as she started running, tugging the threads that bound them.
When Shen-Yun's dead weight came tumbling down, so too did Priya. Again. They rolled in agony, facing each other.
They tussled a few more times in the wet sand, drenching themselves in kelp and sea-salt. Finally, they resigned themselves as amber sunset hues appeared on the horizon.
———————————————————————————————--TOUCH-DOWN——————————————————————————————--
Priya buried her face in the sand, but Shen-Yun still heard her faint, lonely weeping. He inched closer—this time, without disturbing their tangled threads. "I'm sorry," he whispered.
"I know," Priya said, hiding tears. "You already said." She gazed at the horizon. "I am too."
"No," Shen-Yun insisted. "Maybe my fault. Maybe all my fault."
"Huh?" Priya retorted. "It's not. No matter how many times I blame you."
"I don't know..." Shen-Yun muttered. He thought of the cedar planks, the quiet water of his monastery. Still. Silent. Peaceful. But no room—not for anything else. Not for his childhood toys. Not for anything beyond his robe.
"I don't think I want this to end," he confessed.
"I knew it, stalker." Priya couldn't hold back an awkward smile. Like Shen-Yun, her thoughts drifted to home—that cramped Manhattan studio. Or at least, she called it a home. It was packed with achievements and expensive ceramic pots.
"Me neither," she whispered.
"Maybe that's why..." Shen-Yun squeaked, looking at the tangled mess between them. "Exactly why we stuck."
Priya nodded. "So how do we get unstuck?"
"Maybe we try...this," he muttered, starting to untangle the threads. The words hung in his throat. "How your relationship with your mother?"
Priya burst out laughing. Was he serious?
He wasn't filling the silence.
Oh God, he was.
"Pretty shit," she said finally. "How about you?"
"Don't know. She gave me up to monastery. Not enough money."
"Oh..." she replied, quiet now. "I'm glad you still have that community, though. Probably is nice."
"Not my choice to be a monk," Shen-Yun replied coldly.
"What?"
"Yeah."
"Why don't you stop then?"
"Know nothing else. Have no one else," Shen-Yun answered blankly. "Not like you."
Priya lay silent, considering what to say. She reached for the tangled mess he was unraveling and began to help.
"If it's any consolation...having a mom isn't always what it's cracked up to be."
"How so?" Shen-Yun asked.
"Sometimes they hurt you. Sometimes it's better to detach," Priya let the words fall.
"Ah. Maybe not so bad," Shen-Yun reassured. "Buddha say attachment keeps us tethered. To plane of suffering."
They glanced at each other, eyes widening.
"Yeah," Priya broke the silence. "My mom used to say the same thing."
"Really?"
"She used to say it was a man's world. And if we women wanted to succeed, we had no use for 'unnecessary' things like attachment," Priya stared vacantly. "Or love."
Before the memories could sour her mood, Shen-Yun interrupted. "Mom crazy," he said, cracking a smile.
"Now you're getting it," Priya chuckled.
They talked for hours about mundane things—like family and dreams. And life. Every time one was locked, the other happened to be key. Strangely interconnected, their collective wisdom was uncanny.
They even used it for absurd causes. Came this close to cracking JFK’s assassination—before one of them got sidetracked by a childhood memory. Lucky for them, though—because they were being watched.
The agencies monitoring them breathed a collective sigh of relief.
When they finally untangled the mess of threads, the full moon shone over the ocean, glistening in their eyes as they listened to rumbling waves and watched flickering stars.
They could remove their harnesses now. Out came those saffron robes that had traumatized Priya. But in the moonlight, Shen-Yun looked different—more handsome than she remembered.
And Priya? Looking at her black leather jacket and lustrous wavy hair, Shen-Yun realized "witch" might not be the best descriptor. Perhaps temptress.
"So...if you didn't want to be a monk," Priya asked, "what did you want to become?"
"Dancer," Shen-Yun gleamed confidently.
Priya erupted into laughter again. "I can never predict you."
"Why laugh?" Shen-Yun shrank, face reddening. "Dancing beautiful...like crane. Like majestic butterfly, fluttering through the wind."
Priya extended her hand. "Show me what you got, hot stuff," she smirked.
By this point, the feds had arrived. Even arranged an inter-agency truce. But they were too invested in the plot to interfere.
Shen-Yun struck a dramatic pose and tapped through the sand, taking her hand. She tried to reciprocate but trembled from the crash landing's whiplash.
Shen-Yun caught her immediately. Priya put her arms around him as he held her waist. They danced slowly under the glistening moonlight, always leaving respectable room for Siddhartha—until.
Priya collapsed into his chest, clutching those ugly saffron robes. The tears came out hard and sudden as she clenched him tightly. Shen-Yun gripped back, body frozen at first, instincts kicking in. He wrapped his arms around her like she might disappear.
They held each other as if their entire worlds were in the palms of their hands.
"I'll see you again, right?"
Shen-Yun held the back of her head as he whispered into her ears. "Fate won't have any other way. Always."
They smiled, loosening their grip—only to melt even deeper into each other's hold. They held each other peacefully now, savoring each other's warmth.
They would never see each other again.
—————————————————————————————————--LIFT-OFF————————————————————————————————--
Decades passed. Bones aged.
Priya could barely keep herself upright these days. She'd lived a full life—even tried out a marriage or two. But no matter how many years passed, part of her never forgot that moonlit beach, his soft saffron robe.
The truth had come crashing down after that seventh, fateful flight. The media framed it as classic bureaucratic incompetence. The President looked bad—which he'd been really trying to avoid.
Turns out, the FBI had long suspected Shen-Yun was a Chinese psy-op. The CIA, however, was convinced Priya had ties to Muslim extremists. She was Hindu.
The usual story happened. Agencies sabotaged each other, fiery emails flew, and Thanksgivings were ruined. Top officials panicked over the optics—especially the racial ones.
Redactions never seemed to get rid of them.
Everything got swept under the rug—until ICE tried to play hero. Priya's call had tipped them off.
They couldn't understand why no one had tried deportation.
After it all came out, Priya's ex reached out, saying he wanted to try again. She should've said no, but she was lonely. He was jealous of Shen-Yun.
Eventually, he told her to let him go.
Why not? Shen-Yun had already gone back to China, hating the spotlight. She’d apparently inspired him to find his mom.
But she was seventy-nine now. And Shen-Yun still hadn’t faded. Not even after years of PTSD therapy. Or all the therapists who warned her of trauma bonds.
She knew it was something else.
She just didn’t know why. Why she cared. Why it happened. Why she still felt a connection after fifty years.
She’d found comfort in her favorite cosmology programs. The universe apparently began with unusually low entropy—smooth, ordered, and inextricably bound. Until expansion flung it apart.
But some connections remained bound—despite expansion, despite chaos. Quantum entanglement, they called it. Particles forever linked across infinite space.
Like distance meant nothing. Like time meant nothing.
Eventually, in a haze of retirement boredom, she started leaving him voicemails. Years ago. The number was old. She never got a reply. But it calmed her—so she kept calling.
"I saw this amazing dance performance. You would have loved it. So beautiful, so majestic, fluttering through the wind," one rang.
Then, a week ago, a letter arrived. Saffron envelope. A name she didn't recognize.
A young monk wrote from Shen-Yun’s monastery. They’d apparently been telling stories of the “black-jacket witch” for years—debating her cosmic origin like scripture.
Priya chuckled in joyful disbelief, memories streaming back.
The story had gone cold—until Shen-Yun started getting her voicemails. He’d listened to every single one. The whole monastery caught him beaming for weeks.
He’d listened? Priya was too happy to take it personally. She turned the page.
The letter explained that by then, Shen-Yun had started chemotherapy. He didn’t want that to be the last chapter. So he made a plan to set things right.
Enclosed was an invitation to Shen-Yun’s funeral. He’d specifically asked for her, it said. Said it was “necessary.”
She was stunned. It had been decades. And yet, she couldn't help but grin.
She made plans to fly. Sun Country Airlines.
She strode into the monastery, walker in hand, her old leather jacket still slung across her shoulders. Monks murmured as she approached.
A child gasped. "The witch! The witch of legend!"
The monks led her inside and showed her photographs of Shen-Yun—beaming, teaching, dancing barefoot across temple floors. And after the memorial, they returned with a large saffron box.
"He left this for you, madam."
She opened it. Letters. Dozens—no, hundreds. Her hands opened the pages before her mind caught up.
His voice filled her with stupid joy. Absurd jokes filled the pages. About cheetahs. About cranes. About Predator.
The final letter was dated shortly before he died. The tone had changed.
He wrote that the monks believed they’d untangled their karmic threads on that moonlit beach. In their view, the Buddha would celebrate it—freedom from attachment.
The tale was done.
But not for him.
Not truly. He’d secretly hoped their paths would cross again. But fate never did its part.
But when he heard Priya’s first message, he made a choice: “what is unbound can be bound again.”
She read that line again and again.
He said their karma wasn’t settled. Not after all the voicemails, all the letters. He had one final request. Something insane to seal the deal.
He asked her to scatter his ashes.
She froze. Did she deserve this? Had she really known him?
But something fluttered. And she said yes.
So she went back. Back to the place—the time—she'd always longed to return to. The moonlit island was easier to find now, coated with modern development.
And on the beach where they'd once held each other, she scattered his ashes into the bubbling ocean. Alongside them rested the burnt remnants of her leather jacket and old plane tickets.
She started sobbing, as she began the ascent home. But then—laughter.
She thought back to the absurdity of it all. The plane crashes. The accusations. The tangled parachutes. The moment they finally stopped running.
And then it hit her. For an entire lifetime, she had wondered why. The Buddha had one answer. Her cosmology programs had another. But she realized it didn’t matter.
Because despite it all—here she was, on a ridiculous quest. Whatever the cosmic force, she was the one choosing it.
"Maybe… it was us," she grinned. "Maybe we've done this before. And maybe… we’ll do it again."
