[Fast Sunshine takes to the air]

Flying on Fassy's back, as it turns out, is not at all like boogie boarding...or really, anything in Sunny's limited experience in life (and he is now seriously concerned that this is all he is going to get).

The creature's massive back, which gleams like a polished blade but is as amorphous and unformed as a cloud, is every inch warm to the touch. Gusting air currents flow over the bow of this great airship, conducting its warmth all the way down the length of Sunny's body. The sensation is indescribable! As if he is being enveloped in the free-flowing mane of a pegasus...

Logically he knows that they are hurtling through the air, but he may as well be lying completely still. They are concealed in the snowy clouds of summer, ensconced in their own world. He closes his eyes. There is no need to grip Fassy tightly, to flutter or to doubt. He is simply flying with this fantastic creature, flying as if it were completely natural for a human to do so. 

Perhaps, wherever Fassy came from, people have always glided in the air...

A hand taps him on the shoulder. He turns to see Jungmo, reclining easily beside him, curls swept up by the passing wind. Despite being dishevelled and slightly worse for wear, the amateur diplomat is the picture of control. He fishes around in the underarm tote he had been carrying and gestures for Sunny to hold out a hand. After a moment, he hands him a pair of wraparound sunglasses. 

"For the ride," Jungmo explains, pointing to his own aviators. His voice is so sweet, so restrained, that this exchange is mostly sign language. 

Sunny wills himself to nod and put on the glasses, his eyes immediately adjusting for better comfort. Frankly, he does not know what to do with the kindness of his abductors. Every inclusive gesture reinforces his suspicion that they had been waiting for him, preparing for him...readying, with cold precision, to...well, to abduct him!

"Better than a rideshare, isn't it?" A sneering voice flows over the bow, and Sunny doesn't even feel like dignifying it with a turn of his head. 

"Shut up!" He yells at no one in particular.  

"At least take one look down!"

"No!"

In his mind he visualizes Jacob standing - ramrod straight and fearless, king-of-the-world style - atop the midline of their sentient vessel. Sunny silently curses him to get swallowed by a fish, eat rocks, and age badly (in whichever order pleases the universe). But when he actually turns his head, he has to bite back his surprise.

Jacob is snuggled up against Soeun, whose legs are shaking in fear. His arm is wrapped tightly around her, her leash entwined securely around his fingers, and the front of his designer shirt (or should that say, not his shirt!) is dripping wet with a substance very familiar to Sunny from the halcyon days of puppy training. Her Royal Highness Princess Soeun doesn't normally relieve herself in a panic unless the situation is truly extraordinary - Sunny knows it, and immediately feels sorry for her. 

"How's she supposed to toughen up when you can't?" Jacob yells at him over the wind. 

Sunny can't even begin to find the words to respond to either of them. So instead, he scoots closer to the edge...

[Ascending]

They are still in Busan. The simple fact that he can discern this from the air is a thrill. 

They continue to fly north, passing beaches and inlets. Over crowded highways, harbours, cityscapes, and winding coastal roads.  People-shapes and car-shapes pass by in a blur, asserting themselves for only a moment on the great canvas of the Earth. Birds, and the occasional recreational drone, appear mere specks - suggested by the brush of time, but not elaborated. There are vast territories of dark trees in the distance, pines and cypress and zelkova, and at one point Sunny thinks he can discern the fantastic spires of Lotte World. Further still, lumpy lines of mountains dotting the horizon line, and the intimations of massive metropolises. 

He wonders whether anyone below can hear or see them passing overhead - could guess that they are stealing precocious glances at the earthbound world, which now seems only a distant concern? The images roll over at a dizzying pace, like the pretty sights in a vintage viewmaster reel. 

Perhaps it's strange that he doesn't try to call out for help, or even think of it. Maybe, he supposes, his wonder - and correspondingly, his fear - is not as great as he thinks. After all, he knows everything there is to know about that world: its base conduct, its grievances, the unrealized dreams and expired hopes that litter the ground. 

[An unexpected emergency]

At last, when he thinks they have nearly travelled to the border of Ulsan, they begin their descent. But something is wrong. 

"Where did you put the house?" Jacob yells at Jungmo, heedless of the fact that this inquiry doesn't make much sense. 

"I'd left it on the beachfront."

"What - here? Right in the middle of freaking..." 

"We should come upon it shortly. The new roofing material should be easy to spot. And, I am happy to report that our dormers are completely remodelled with the remarkable clay we collected in Wari - "

"Again. No airstrip. I specifically asked for one. We have human and canine cargo" - one muscular arm swings around, gesturing to the rightfully indignant "cargo" - "and you've put us right on an abrasion coast with a kilometre of craggy shoals on all sides, now what the hell am I supposed to do with that?

"Next time, just plop us right in Taejongdae, at least that'd be a photo op," Jacob continues to grouch, as he puts both hands on the foremost part of Fassy's curvature and gives it a gentle, measured pull upwards - as if negotiating with a bull. 

The craft appears to respond immediately, its sudden deceleration causing every cell in Sunny's body to rattle against its next-door neighbours. 

"All right, kids! Prepare for hard impact," Jacob warns.

"Wait, what??" Sunny cries. 

"He means we're going to the beach!" Jungmo clarifies, grabbing Sunny and Soeun with both arms and cradling their heads for dear life, as the terrain beneath them rapidly expands to an astonishing scale, faster than they can prepare for it. "Hang on!"

[Descending]

The jolt is even more terrifying than Sunny expected. With an awful screech of metal scraping against stone, the airy feeling of escapism is over. 

Pain floods his mind for a brief moment. He's not sure who is injured or how, only that somebody must be. He has the vague sense of sliding over the trailing edge of one of Fassy's arms, perhaps taking Soeun with him in the process - the sensation of rocks biting, all along his legs - and Soeun, gasping in his arms. 

There are distant sounds - or maybe they are proximal but muffled - as if his brain is being balled up violently in a sheet of paper. A voice, like Jungmo's, calling for him, but it is garbled on the receiving end. Jacob, attempting to take his arm. A rush of blood to his ears and face, as he is hoisted upwards - 

"What happened?" He asks. 

And suddenly, as if his voice were a spell, everything is clarified.

He awakes from the dream of pain. He is standing on the edge of a long beach. Before him stretches the path that Fassy took to get there: a long hot partition in the grey and dun gravel, motes of dust and ash wafting upwards. And beyond that, dark shadows - crags of rock dissolving into the corrosive sea, that advances inexorably to the horizon. They might have ended up as wreckage there, if Jacob hadn't exercised his judgment. And then, to one side - though it twigs no curiosity in him - he can just about make out, at the edge of his field of vision, the geometric contours of a conspicuously misplaced house.

Awkwardly, he finds his legs, and Jacob relinquishes his tight hold on him.

"...You didn't feel that?" Jacob seems amazed. 

"I didn't," he replies quietly, a little gasp of air escaping from his lungs. Through gleaming strands of hair, he can see that his pant legs are completely shredded below the knee, as if they had been dragged haphazardly across a bed of nails. 

Without thinking, he lets go of Soeun, who had been wrapped up tightly in his arms, and who easily sprints off across the sand.