Flash Fiction Day 6: Economy, a cable, a hostess.

 Prompt: Economy, a cable, a hostess.

Once the plane had taken off, Tam breathed a sigh of relief. She had managed to not embarrass herself when welcoming the passengers and helping them find their seats, and she had even gotten a few smiles in return! She just needed to get through the next eight hours with no incident, which was a daunting task for her. The number of times Tam had been fired from a job in the first week was way too much, but this one seemed promising. She had survived cabin crew training and had successfully become an air hostess even with her running streak of bad luck. There were no screaming babies on her flight and she only had to work in the economy class for the first few months, which was a relief. If there was one thing Tam could not stand, it was snotty rich people, and she certainly had no patience for dealing with them. For now, all she had to do was serve hot food and drink on a flying metal bird thousands of feet in the air without spilling anything. I can do this.

Tam could, in fact, not do this. She was reaching to hand a glass of juice to a passenger when she tripped over a cable. Time slowed as her leg buckled and she watched the glass slide forward on her tray with horror, liquid sloshing up and out of the glass. No, please, not this, not now!

In a snap of movement nobody could see, the glass straightened back up on the tray and the liquid that had been spilling out milliseconds ago was back in the glass. She stood there, bent forward with the tray in hand, not knowing what had just happened. It looked like nobody had noticed… except for a pair of small eyes peeking from the middle aisle. She shook her head, pasted on a huge smile, and carried on with her duties. When they were done, she went into the galley to collect her thoughts. Before she had time to breathe, she felt a tiny tug on her arm sleeve.

“I saw what you did. Are you a fairy, miss?”

Bewildered, she looked down at the child gazing at her eagerly. He held up his toy magic wand with a silver star at the end and continued, “I’m also a fairy but I’m not so good at magic. Can you show me?”

Tam was clumsy and unlucky, and especially awkward with children. She attempted an answer that would get the child back to his seat, “That was just good luck. I’m sure you can meet a real fairy to teach you one day.”

His shoulders sagged and tears welled up in his big, round eyes. Tam quickly tried to stop the oncoming wailing by kneeling and stating, “Actually, maybe you’re right. We could try some tricks together and see how that goes?”

Like a switch being flipped, the boy beamed, “Yeah! Can we get wings?”

Tam chuckled, “Let’s start with something small. How about making that spoon over there move?”

The boy flapped his arms excitedly, then, frowning in concentration, he pointed his wand at the spoon on the trolley beside them. Tam pretended to focus as well and pointed with her finger, thinking about the spoon moving up. The boy and the flight attendant looked at each other with comically similar expressions of shock and amazement when the spoon floated into the air.