“Oh,” and he laughs, warmly and hoarsely, like an old engine. “Not really, my dear. Heaven is very, very far away; I don’t think that’s the way to feel it.” He settles down on a backless bench near an old oak tree, putting Laura Lee back on the ground. “I feel closer to God when I come back safely to the ground. The further you are from your ground, the harder it is to feel connected to anything, you see? Why do you ask? Did you feel closer to God on my shoulders?”

“I did." She nods vigorously. “When I grow up, I want to fly planes too.”

“Well, that’s very difficult.” He looks at her with that specific kind of fascination people give children who set their feet on anything—when the act of securing yourself to an idea is more important than the idea itself. Securing yourself means growing up.

“It cannot be that difficult,” Laura Lee says sheepishly, and her grandfather laughs again.

For as long as she remembers dreaming, Laura Lee dreams of the skies. She looks up whenever she prays, and the wooden boards of the ceiling she sees are like a coffin lid. She can’t reach them when she’s on her knees, and not even when she stands up, but she imagines herself to be infinitely taller, entirely unbound, to be hitting the wood with her fists, decisively yet gently, as if holding a steering wheel. It’s not until Bible camp that she learns most people look down when they pray. It’s not until Bible camp that Laura Lee learns that most people see religion as a restriction of sorts. It’s a set of rules that teaches you the words you cannot say and the people you cannot be.

To her, it’s the skies. If the clouds are anything close to what she imagines them to be, buckets of cold water filling your lungs and making you learn to breathe differently, it’s just like being baptized. To her, religion is freedom. Anything Laura Lee does, she does because she believes it’s right, so it’s a zero sum of giving and taking. She believes in miracles, but she also doesn’t think about them too often. If you start expecting miracles, they aren’t miracles anymore. There’s a place for everything, and hers is somewhere on her grandfather’s shoulders, scratching the barrier of infinity.

She’s not afraid of God—she trusts God. She’s still afraid of Ferris wheels, roller coasters, and skyscrapers because these are the forces she cannot control—nobody’s running them. If believing taught her anything, it’s that you cannot trust a machine or anything without a soul. Soul is everything, and hers is beautiful, with large glass windows and a view of the clouds, birds, and sunshine. With flying, it’s all in her hands, so steady and eager to punch through ceilings.

Her grandfather tells her a lot about plane crashes and dead-stick landings as she gets older. It doesn’t scare her. Caution is not fear. It’s a warning, a lesson, and a blessing. To be cautious is to be brave. Laura Lee is nothing if not brave. She knows that when a plane takes off, porcelain shatters inside you, and you can never fix what’s broken, but debris is also not fear; it’s a sign of living.

“Pilots die too, you know?” That's what her grandfather tells her in elementary school, when her dreams are still too bright and too distracting. She’s a hard-working child, but she still just shrugs when anybody asks her about her favorite class.

“Everybody does." Laura Lee frowns at him, with her neat sunshine hairstyle and another one of her flowery dresses. More often than not, she comes home with her hem dirty and her forehead sweaty. “It’s not for us to decide.”

When Laura Lee starts playing soccer with her classmates in the schoolyard, landing in mud, scraping her knees, and only ever crying before bed, almost nobody’s surprised. Running is almost like flying, and competing is almost like taking control, steering a wheel, and her grandfather tells her there’s nothing more important for a pilot than his ground. If you don’t look down, you’ll never learn how to land. So she keeps falling face-first, but she still looks up during all of her prayers. Religion is a zero sum. When she’s eight, she’s finally stretched in both sides.

(this is actually a part of a currently-abandoned LottieLee fanfiction I was working on. I just really like how this part turned out, so I didn't want to let it go to waste. maybe some of you will like it and be potentially interested in my future writing for this fandom. you can also follow my ao3 (link in my blog description) where I post lots of horror-themed content and plan on posting a MistyNat fic in the future