The passengers were getting impatient. With every passing moment, she could hear the groans growing louder and the low growls turning into grumbles of vexation. The men stamped their feet while the women brandished their long manicured fingernails. They were like a troop of dissatisfied soldiers who had not been fed enough and rather abandoned by their generals. They were not going to wait much longer.
The commotion immediately sent for the crew to present themselves who came in with black suits and hands thrown in the air. "We can't do anything about the plane." The pilot said, "but the company takes responsibility for your stay until you take off on the next flight possible."It's a five-star hotel," an air-hostess added.
The general in command and his minister had not even finished speaking when the soldiers jumped upon the papers - they were planning on distributing - and ran, with their teeth bared into a huge smile, over to the airport gate. Malad did not even realise what happened until she was being pushed into a bus seat right next to Amdo. The crowd was calming down now. The snarls turning into polite smiles as parents hugged their children, and couples embraced each other to safety.
Even Amdo had a ghost of a smile on his lips. Malad took this opportunity when he couldn't escape (after all, all seats of the coach were full...) and poured her heart out. "I love you," she began while Amdo watched her dumbstruck, "I love you so much that it has been killing me to see you like that." As she saw him protesting and flapping, his mouth continued, "Shush! Let me finish. I know you are going to say it was because of me that you were in that condition, but believe me, it is all just a misunderstanding." Amdo's face was breaking from a frown into more of a questioning curiosity. "I did see the tickets from your bag, and I did find out where we were going... but it wasn't because I don't trust you." She looked him in the eye. "It was because..." she looked down playing with her fingernails but with a certain resolve stared him directly in the eye, and with a twinkle in her own, "I'm travel sick;" she confessed, "or used to be when I was a teenager. So I just wanted to make sure if the journey is going to be okay enough for me to travel. And it is."
"There's no such thing as travel sickness." Amdo stated.
"There is! I've been suffering from it all my life! Until I got my own license and started driving." She argued. "You see, it's a kind of a misconnection between what your eye and your ear tell your brain. Your eyes tell it that you are sitting comfortably on your seat, so do your feet, but your ears and your skin feel the movement, the vibrations, the air pressure. So your brain gets all confused. Your head starts to ache, your stomach starts to rumble, and you want to vomit." She explained, "that's why looking out of the window helps. Assuring your brain that you ARE moving. The winds help even more. Not so much, but it helps. Do you understand what I'm saying?" She confirmed.
"It makes sense... but " Amdo hesitated, "why don't I feel it? Let that alone. Why does nobody I've ever met feel it?!" He exclaimed.
"Because everybody is different, Ams" she placed her arms around his shoulders.
"I don't buy it." Amdo said. But still, a smile spread across his face. There was still, however, a little cloud hovering over the corner of his eye, but at least it made sense what she said. It was believable. He just had to do with what he got, for now.