The Wrights' Grandson

[zanna]

Here is a short story idea I've been kicking around; it's called The Wrights' Grandson because it's about a guy who has loved planes all his life, and he joins the Air Force. This 'episode,' if you will, is when his long-time (and long-distance) girlfriend comes to visit him at the Academy. His name is just "he" for right now, and she is simply she; the other characters have names as needed.

I would appreciate any feedback -- if sentences don't make any sense whatsoever, if you have another idea for wording, if you want more character development, etc. It'll probably be all of the above, lol. Anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy! Also, I realize there's a fair amount of creative license involved here, so yeah. Tell me about it if it bugs you too much, or if there are areas I could make more accurate without scrapping the premise totally, lol. =)
*****

Her heart pounded as she was jostled along with the crowd coming off the airplane. She was a bundle of nerves -- excited, but worried as well -- scanning the faces gathered outside security. It wasn't long before she spotted his bright smile and ran to greet him, dropping her bags at his feet unceremoniously and, after the briefest hesitation, jumping into his outstretched arms.

"It's so good to see you again!" Her relief at arriving safely and seeing him again rolled over her in a wave, and she sighed, able to let go of her earlier anxiety.

"Same here -- I haven't had many visitors, you know." He sighed as well, breathing in the scent of her hair for the first time in months. Colorado Springs was no slouch of a city, but sometimes he felt like a hermit anyway, isolated from her by his hectic school schedule, and the bowl of mountains rising to the sky on all sides.

"I'm just glad it worked out. I really wanted to come see you in your element." She knew how much the Air Force meant to him, and hoped to understand more of the reasons why after spending the weekend as his guest.

"Well, I'm happy you were willing to drop everything and fly out here."

"Come on, an excuse to ditch work for the weekend, especially one as good-looking as yourself? Of course I'd want to!" She surprised herself by being so forward -- normally she was a lot more shy -- but then decided that it was alright, since they'd been dating for a solid year and a half. He laughed at her teasing and carried some of the luggage for her as they walked towards the doors.

"You know, as much as I enjoy our late night chats, they don't do anything for my sleep schedule. But, the whole entire weekend is free, so we'll be able to catch up a lot." The time zone difference was on her side, and often it was hard for them to say goodnight, in spite of early morning obligations.

"Well, I suppose we'll have to work on that. But what's first on the agenda?"

"Getting back to base, and signing you in. They'll put you up in one of the guest dorms."

"That's so cool, that they let visitors just stay on base."

"Yeah, it can be pretty tortuous, though. So close, and yet so far." He smiled wistfully and she laughed.

"Who needs respectability and decorum, anyway? Oh well -- I'm sure I'll be up before the sun, this weekend." She figured she wouldn't be able to sleep much anyhow, away from her own bed.

"Good, because tomorrow we have to be at the airport by oh-eight hundred hours for our pre-flight briefing." She stopped short and stared at him in shock. He reached back to pull her out of the way of an oncoming taxi.

"You're kidding, right?" She asked after her initial speechlessness had worn off.

He gave her an awe-shucks grin and said, "Nope. You told me I could forget about seeing you unless I was going to fly you around, so I just had to make it happen."

"Well, I was only teasing. I mean, that would be the icing on the cake, but I didn't think it was possible!" They'd reached the car now, and together they put her things in the trunk.

"I know. I just liked the idea a lot, too, and I wanted to see if I could pull it off." He held open the passenger door.

"And you wanted to show off," she accused jokingly.

"What guy wouldn't, especially for his fearless girlfriend?" He let go of the door to give her another hug.

"Curious, not fearless. Bit of a difference, there."

The trip back to base was short, but nice. Despite chatting online so frequently, they still had a lot to catch up on – and besides, it’s different, having a conversation in person, able to hear someone’s voice.

At one point, they ended up staring into each others’ eyes, but fortunately she snapped out of it in time, and said, “Hey, now! You’ve got to keep your eyes on the road, you’re the one driving!” He smiled sheepishly, but returned his gaze to the highway.

“Doesn’t seem fair, if you ask me.” He sniffed pointedly.

“How so?”

“You can stare at my dashing profile all you like, but I can’t even look in your direction until we arrive!” She laughed at his odd combination of teasing egotism and flattery.

“Trust me, you have the better end of the deal. Your eyes would be shut tight, and you’d be holding on for dear life, if I was driving.” She avoided driving like most people avoid getting sick – her first few experiences behind the wheel had ended poorly.

“Oh, I’m sure you’d do fine. Besides, cars don’t bother me much, these days.”

“Huh, I suppose not.” She thought about tomorrow’s flight, and was glad she was only along for the ride then, as well. “So what’s the schedule for tomorrow?”

“We’ll probably eat around six. Then we’ll go through our briefing, and won’t have to come back until around ten, which is awesome.”

“It’d probably be a good idea to eat light, though?”

“I would if I were you, just because the first few times up can be pretty wild. It certainly isn’t the same as a commercial flight.”

“I hope not! They are rather boring.”

“I promise not to bore you tomorrow.” His grin was rather mischievous.

“Why do I have the feeling you’re up to something?”

“Because I am. But I’ll warn you,” he added quickly.

“‘Be careful what you wish for,’ eh? I just might get it?” He laughed.

“I just hope you’re happy with everything It should be quite the day.” He took a deep breath and let it out, shaking his head a bit. Would he really have the courage to go through with it? Was it the right time? Was it even a good idea, to begin with? He just didn’t know.

Finally they’d arrived, and their conversation was put on hold while they made the proper arrangements. Once her things were in her room, they strolled around a bit before it was time for taps. After deciding on a place to meet in the morning, he walked her back to the building where she was staying.

Standing at the foot of the stairs, she was all fidgety, and finally said, “I feel like you’re taking me home after our first date. We never really had one, did we?”

“No . . .” he thought for a moment; “I guess not. Hmm.” He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close, while she twined her arms around his neck.

“I had a really nice time this evening, and I can’t wait for tomorrow.”

It was so teen-romance movie script cheesy, but he played along, and said, “Me too, and me neither.” He winked and kissed her deeply, for the first time in . . . way too long, that was for sure.

[prendrelemick]

This is good

What I liked about this was the Lack of the almost obligatory back story paragraphs, and the obligatory discribing the protagonists paragraph, and the obligatory character establishing paragraphs. The dialogue was so well handled these were not needed. We learned all we need to know through the dialogue.
(Although to be fair the intro at the top helped)

There is a lot of dialogue (thats good) and it is well written. The only (very minor) gripe I have with it is that the two people sound exactly the same when they speak, like its your voice not theirs, they don't have a distinctive idiom .

[zanna]

Thanks for the comments! Yeah, I was 'cheating' by trying to start the story in the middle, since I don't know what any of the previous scenes look like yet. I write things really out of order, lol.

About the voices -- I totally agree with you; I think I'll just have to fiddle with it a lot, because yeah, everybody sounds like me right now. =P

[csgraham]

You know sometimes it's okay for two people to sound alike because in life, when two people are together for significant amounts of time, they will start mimicking each others mannerisms and vocal habits. (Sort of the Married-people-end-up-looking-alike thing.) Now for a short story, I think it's necessary to have individual voices. As for a novel, I don't know, I haven't started toying with those yet. The problem with these two character's having the same voice is there is no background with them yet, so we don't know exactly how to hear them; but as the story evolves and unfolds, we will learn and begin to hear differences. For now, an idea to subtly explain the similarities would be to have them talking on the phone rather than chatting on-line and that could show that they are picking up on each others style of communication. I don't know, maybe I'm digging to much into that.

Over all, I enjoyed the story, which says a lot because there is no conclusion and I have a hard time with stories that seemingly go no where. but I can see myself reading more and getting into the story, and into the characters. I like to read stories told by way of dialogue. One, I learn from it. It's good to see people actually trying in their writing. Some people are way too lazy and leave character development to a narrator as opposed to the character himself. Dialogue is the hardest thing to make natural sounding, but I think you did a good job of it. I can see that conversation take place.

[AuntShecky]

It's okay to have a story which is mostly dialogue, and even though much of our ordinary everyday speech is heavy on colloquialisms, the dialogue here needs freshening. Also, how about a more active scene in which we can see the aviator in actual flight?

[zanna]

Thank you, csgraham and AuntShecky, for you comments. I was going to post another portion of it -- should I just edit the original post and tack it on, do you think? There's probably four more scenes from this particular time together, which would help flesh out their relationship.

@csgraham -- I'm glad you like the fact that it's mostly dialogue, since that's mainly how I roll, lol! Also, this is just but one scene in a larger story, and I'm still not sure how big of an arc it's going to have yet. Maybe if this piece came later on, the fact that their speech sounds so similar wouldn't bother the reader?

@AuntShecky -- I'm glad you're shooting straight . . . I've gotten soft on this, but when I re-read it, I can hear how trite it sounds. Back to the drawing board! And, as for the flight scene, I still have to figure out how to make that work. There's one where he and she go for a joyride, but it's not very long. I'm sure it will figure more prominently into the story, the farther I take it, though. Thank you for the suggestion! I'll just have to do the necessary research. =)

[zanna]

Mkay, so I'm going to post the next installment, guys, right where the original post left off. This one doesn't really get that far, but maybe you can get a better sense of who they are. Here goes:

She was going to chide him for not getting her meaning, but soon thought better of it. She had to admit, as nice as it was to chat online and stay in contact that way, it certainly didn’t hold a candle to moments like these.

Then the opening bars of Taps wafted to them on the evening breeze, and he sighed before releasing her waist and whispering, “Sweet dreams.”

“You too. Love ya,” and she kissed his cheek quickly, allowing him to jog back to his own room. She headed upstairs, and even though she’d been up pretty early and had such an exciting day, she had a hard time falling asleep.

The alarm woke her at a quarter past five, and she was rather disoriented until she remembered the day’s plans. Still drowsy, she showered and dressed for breakfast. The cool air helped to wake her up a bit, but she was still rubbing the sleep from her eyes when he came striding across the quad.

“Is it always this quiet in the morning?” She looked at him blearily, and he laughed.

“No, but since most people are free today, they’re probably sleeping in. It’s the last Saturday we have for ourselves this month.”

“Ew.” She grimaced at the thought of not having a weekend, and her face made him laugh again. “You’re rather chipper.” It was a teasing accusation. “You didn’t lose any sleep at all, even though I was only a couple thousand feet away?” she asked, pretending to be hurt. He swallowed hard.

“Actually, that did keep me awake for a while.” His worries came flooding back – and he’d just gotten rid of all of that mess, too! Tossing and turning last night, he’d finally decided against every grand speech idea thus far, and was seriously considering winging it – or just not saying anything, one or the other. But that wasn’t supposed to happen until later, after flying and this afternoon’s plans. He was going to have to put it out of his mind until the time was right.

Fortunately, between eating breakfast and appreciating the sunrise, she didn’t pursue her line of questioning, and then it was time for their pre-flight briefing. Most of it went over her head – Har, har, very punny, she thought to herself – but she did notice the wink the CO gave him, before they headed out to the runway.

It seemed like before she even realized what was happening, they were flying over base; all the little buildings neatly laid out on a grid of walkways, which also encompassed several grassy quads and the sports fields.

“This is amazing!”

“I know . . . the first time’s the best, but you never really get over it; or so I’m told. Wanna see a trick?”

“Um, sure?”

“How would you like to fly upside down?” She gulped.

“That’d be cool, I think.” He laughed.

“Ok, three . . . two . . . one!” She’d expected a ‘go,’ or something, so when they went over on one, she let out a small yelp.

“You ok?”

“Yeah. Yeah! That’s trippy.”

“Kinda cool, though, eh?” He managed to talk her into a few more aerobatics, but all too soon, it was time to land.

They hadn’t been out of the cockpit even two seconds before she’d wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him. Slightly shocked, albeit pleasantly, he turned crimson when the ground crew began to applaud and whistle.

[prendrelemick]

Ok, nothing extra to add yet, as you say it hasn't moved on much.

The pargraph that begins; "Actually, that did keep me awake for a while." Is a bit sloppy, if it is important to the plot it needs rewriting. But do you need to drop so big a hint as to what he's planning?

In a way it reminds me of a 1950's movie, when everything was nicer.

[zanna]

I was trying to keep it true to his stream-of-consciousness, prendrelemick, but you are probably right. It is pretty sloppy, and too big of a hint. I was trying to set it up so that everybody knew what was going on except her, but I could still do that and keep it tactful, lol. =)

And yes, fortunately/unfortunately, depending on your opinion, my writings are usually very idyllic.