Novalock Publishing

I tried Wattpad, soooo here we are. We write cool poems, short stories, and sci-fi books!

[novalockpublish]

The Skyhawk Sisters, Pt. 1

"Angelica! What the fuck is this I heard about you going to see some damn icebergs with my daughter?" The man screams on the other end of the phone.

Angelica, a 34-year-old, athletic, dark-skinned, ecological scientist, struggles to navigate her ex-husbands anger. She stands just outside the doors of a small airport. The sun is bright, but the chilly winds of the arctic circle nip at her scalp between her braids. "I told you about this. You gave a verbal okay 3 weeks ago! It's not my fault if you can't remember! She's OUR daughter, I don't know if you remember but I was there for her birth, too."

"Angelica Roberts-"

"It's Steward now. I made sure to change that the last last time you got angry."

"I- You are so-" He huffs and puffs. He screams. Something falls to ground and breaks. "I swear to FUCKING GOD, I am going to get my lawyer to give me full custody if you don't get your asses out of Alaska!"

"David, this is my month of custody. I want to show Eliza something more real than some Indiana skyscrapers." She feels tears welling up, but she talks through them.

"You kidnapped my daughter and by the time I get through making this police report about the mental abuse you've put me through, I'll have you on the FBI most wanted list!"

"It's not kidnapping, we talked about it when we traded off for your month. I'm not doing anything outside of our state-approved contract. Please. You said it was fine then. She's been through enough court as it is, can you please just trust me?"

Angelica's father, Isaiah "Ghost" Steward, steps out to see the tears falling on his daughter's face. He asks silently if it's David. She nods. He asks for the phone. She shakes her head and continues to reason with David to calm down. The 61-year-old, Naval pilot veteran extends his hand and looks at her sternly. She tells David that Ghost wants to talk to him. David is not interested in that conversation, but she passes the phone all the same. "Keep talkin to my babygirl like that and you gon learn how I got my nickname, boy. I got that shit before I enlisted. If you can't-" David begins to rant again, less angry, but still passionate and threatening. "Okay. If that's how you feel, we'll call you later. Have a blessed day." He hangs up the still-yelling phone. Angelica looks at him concerned, he assures her, “You’re a good mother. If Peggy was here-“

“Please, dad. Can we not? I don’t wanna talk about mom, you don’t wanna talk about the service.”

He sighs, “She’d be proud of you too, is all.”

A girl on her way to the 7th grade taps on the window of the flight planning room inside of the building. She kneels and faces backwards on a spinny, rolling office chair. Her voice is muffled through the glass as she asks, “Can we go home now? The weather is bad!”

[novalockpublish]

The Skyhawk Sisters Pt. 8

Eliza poorly directs Angelica's flying in an attempt to snapshot a wolf chasing a rabbit through the snow.

"Does my National Geographic crew back there have enough good ones?" Angelica teases. "The plane doesn't have an infinite fuel glitch, sorry to say. We still have the ACTUAL ICEBERGS to see. You can take more pictures there." He packs up his camera and slides back into the front seat as she makes the radio calls and reconfigures the plane to get back to cruising.

The winds get a little rougher, so she does her best to hold the right altitude. She resets the trim and reassures Eliza. After a few minutes, she deafens and mutes Eliza's headset to speak freely. Ghost sits nervously in the jostling plane, but trusts his daughter. "I need you to fly. I'll try some other stuff to see how deep into this we are.”

He grabs the controls and stares down the instruments. “I have the plane.”

“You have the plane?”She asks.

Fully in the driver’s seat, Ghost says, “I have the plane. Tell me what you need.” She pulls out her tablet and plays back the weather radar tracking and sees that the storm they were trying to avoid that WAS moving east, is now moving south. They can try to turn back but the turbulence would only allow for wide, gentle turns. A wrong move and the plane could stall with no guarantee of recovery. There’s no airport in a reasonable distance, even crashing at Santa Station isn’t doable, they got a bad spot in this even before the family did.

She says, “If we cut the corner of the storm, it’ll get worse but it’ll be shorter. We can’t turn 180…” She waits. “Do we have any other viable option right now?”

[novalockpublish]

The Skyhawk Sisters Pt. 7

Ghost tries desperately to keep up. "Is Roblox more like Minecraft or Runescape?" The two laugh at him. "Well it reminds me of a book. Do they even have those in school anymore? Or y'all just use em for decoration now? It's called 'Indiana Jones and the Hollow Earth'."

Angelica says, "I can add that for my next audiobook."

"Well, Eliza. Write that down for something to look up when you get home." She opens a note-taking app and sets the reminder for herself in a few weeks. "You could stand to lose a few hundred feet and a little speed, couldn't you? How am I supposed to get a picture of anything like this?"

"Yeah, I can come down a some." Angelica announces her plan and positions the plane for more sightseeing.

Ghost finds some rivers and animals rustling in the snow, being sure to show Eliza each one. Eliza asks if she can try. He guides her on the process. "It's very VERY important that you keep your finger off the button until you're ready to take the picture. It's easy to get rid of pictures now, but these used to have a thin paper called film, so you could only take maybe 30 pictures instead of 5,000 like today."

"Well if we can delete them so easy, why do I have to be so careful?" "It's just a good practice. The more time you spend deleting, the less time you have to take pictures." He positions her hands, "Keep your right finger straight, don't rest it on the button. Look through the window at the top until it looks good, THEN push the button. Think you got it?" She nods, and the two of them take pictures as the three of them joke and laugh about the wildlife and features below.

[novalockpublish]

The Skyhawk Sisters Pt 6

Angelica says, "Because you're thinking about it too hard."

"You wanna talk about thinking too hard?" He chuckles, "There was this one time when I was growing up and me my Cousin Crip-we called him that cause he sprained his ankle all the time-he had this little popper toy that he could throw on the ground. It was something that you throw on the ground and it was really, REALLY loud. But he also had a little BB gun revolver-"

Angelica says, "We're approaching the remote weather station, switching frequencies." Ghost turns back around to take notes.

A male voice transmits, "Goood morning, November-3-3 this is Santa Station. How are we today?"

She transmits, "Santa Station, November-3-3. Doing pretty good, looking to head to the Turner point via the Fenton pass."

The station says, "The Fenton pass is seeing a really nasty storm right now, take Tennyson, due west and then continue North. I'm not really getting a read on the top of the storm. Descend and maintain 4,000 feet aaaand switch to Tennyson frequency." Ghost writes it down.

Angelica repeats it back and follows through. She tells Eliza, "Sooo, it's gonna take a little longer than we thought, but we'll get to see some snowy forests!" Eliza jumps up and down in her seat with glee. For the next several minutes, Eliza continues trying to explain the monster powers and levels and trading setup to a man who puts on his glasses to see the screen. "Did you wanna start taking pictures? I've got the plane."

"Youv'e got the plane?" He asks.

"I've got the plane."

He leans the seat back flat and joins his granddaughter. From his flight bag, he pulls a professional camera. "You see the trees and stuff down there?" Angelica asks.

"Yeah! It looks like a place I've been on Roblox!" Eliza says.

[novalockpublish]

The Skyhawk Sisters Pt. 5

He laughs, "See? Not all of my stories are going over your head." He tries again, "Up here, all those trees look so small... and so do problems..." He waits. "And arguments..." He keeps waiting. He gives up, "Okay, can we talk about you and-"

"I am flying the plane, dad." She says flatly. "I just wanna focus on that. Peaceful to me means a head void of thought. Those are ground problems. I'm handling air problems right now."

He sighs in defeat and pulls a spare headset from the glovebox. He reaches back around to get Eliza's attention and tells her to put them on. Her little voice comes through the headset to both of them, "Are we there yet?"

"No, we've still got a little bit." He says. "What game are you playing?"

Eliza lights up with excitement, "It's this game where there are all these little monsters that you can train to fight, but you also have to make sure that they sleep so they don't get too tired or hungry and pass out in the middle of the fight. You can pet them and take them shopping with you and train them, too!" She turns the tablet around to show a confusing number of buttons. He takes one look and realizes he will NEVER understand it. But nods and smiles, pretending to learn. "And to feed them you have to have a farm with little animals, but some animals you can talk to and buy things from and those ones wear clothes, but other ones you have to take to the butcher when they're the right size."

"Wait, so what's the difference between the animals in clothes and the naked ones?" He asks.

"The naked ones are food."

He furrows his brow. "Why does that feel political statement?"

[novalockpublish]

The Skyhawk Sisters Pt 4

Angelica cues up the weather radio for Ghost to write down the latest.

The digital display isn't bright enough. She smacks the dashboard and it brightens. "Fuckin piece of shit!" She makes the radio call and starts taxiing to the runway. She sees someone slowly starting to roll out on to the tarmac at different intersection. "Either roll across or keep holding short! Cause I'm going now!" The other plane slams on their brakes as she lines up with the center line to takeoff. "Thank you." With full power and all good guages, they liftoff into the partly cloudy sky.

After making radio calls and leveling off at cruising altitude, she notices that it's hard to track on her planned course. Ghost scratches down some numbers for crosswind math and gives her a new heading to fly. She looks out for traffic and leans out the engine fuel mixture for the altitude. Eliza realizes that Roblox won't work on her tablet anymore, so she switches to an offline game.

The engine vibration of the plane is rhythmic. The radio sits quiet. Ghost breaks the 14 minutes of human silence, "When I saw my first airport, I knew right then I wanted to be whoever got to drive it. I didn't know why, but when I solo'd I found out. It's peaceful up here. It gives you time to think about things that you usually can't on the ground." He looks over to Angelica. "And people..." He hopes she'll say something. She doesn't. "Sometimes I think about your mom up here. Remember how I proposed to her?" She nods and smiles as he keeps going. "I took her on her first flight and nosed down so hard, it felt like zero gravity." They say together, "And the ring fell into her lap."

[novalockpublish]

The Skyhawk Sisters Pt. 3

It works on the ground, but can fail in the air next to the engine heat. That AND we've gotta check the wiring to the pitot tube heat, the last thing you wanna do is think you're going faster than you are."

Angelica sighs, "So where are the good planes?"

The mechanic shrugs, "Not in here, I know that much."

Eliza points to a plane nearby and tied down but not in the hanger, "What about that one?" It's also the only one in within reasonable walking distance.

Angelica looks at the mechanic. He says, "I was just told if it's in the hanger it's a no-go. And there's so many in here, if we really tried we could probably squeeze one more in here. So... I mean, I wouldn't, but it's probably fine."

"Got a golf cart around here?" She asks.

"Not for another half hour."

"Then it's good enough for me. Come on, Liz." Eliza starts to put her headphones on again. Her mom stops her, "Headphones IN the plane, but not on the ground. It's called situational awareness. Things can be fine and then get very bad very fast. I know it seems safe, but you just never know, okay?" Eliza holds them in her hand and walks to the new plane.

They pre-flight, untie, and just before the plane starts, Ghost looks around for something. "Do we have a first-aid backpack?"

"It's a 90-minute flight, we'll be fine." He opens the door, "I'll grab one out of the other planes. I'll be back." He hops out and grabs a red backpack with a white cross out of the storage of a grounded plane. His door slams shut as the propeller starts under the wind force. He gets in and tosses it in the backseat with Eliza.

[herewithinthevoid]

every so often something nice happens on the other hellsite 𖹭

[thememedaddy]

[novalockpublish]

The Skyhawk Sisters Pt. 2

Angelica bares her clenched teeth, furrows her brow, and points down. Eliza quickly moves to sit in the chair properly. Angelica and Ghost come back inside and gather their flight plans and other tools in their flight bags. Eliza grabs her backpack with her tablet and phone. She asks for a snack from the vending machine. Angelica says no, and waves her out of the office.

They head out from the FBO and onto the tarmac. The Alaskan, late summer sun warms the skin against the brisk arctic wind. In the distance there are a variety of small planes tied down in an uncovered parking lot but there aren’t any available electric golf carts to easily make that distance. In a nearby hanger, several small, single-engine propeller planes sit nuzzled together like puzzle pieces. Some facing backwards, some facing forwards. Ghost pulls out the preflight checklist and hold it close to his weathered eyes and calls out things on the exterior for Angelica to check. Eliza quickly sits inside with her headphones and tablet. The tank is half-full, enough for a short flight.

They slowly push the plane out of the hanger. Mechanics close by see and race over, waving their hands and yelling to stop them. The two pilots pull the plane to stop it from rolling. Ghost asks, "What's the problem, gentlemen?" One of the meachanics wearing oil-stained, navy blue coveralls hops out and says, "You can't fly in this one. Or any of these in here." Angelica sighs and starts getting Eliza out of the plane. The three of them listen to him explain, "All of the planes in this hanger are down for maintainance right now. The little lever that turns on the carburator heat are all part of a bad manufacturer's batch.

[jhoomwrites]

when reading a book, do you read the prologue/epilogue?

yes

prologue only

epilogue only

no

nuance (comments/tags)

Voting ended onApr 13

[yusuke-of-valla]

Looking at the tags, a lot of people are blessedly unaware of the Discourse, for posterity:

[orcboxer]

do they think... that prologues and epilogues... which take place within the story and are very much inside of the same book as the rest of the pages... don't count as part of the book....???.....

[gardenofava]

[novalockpublish]

I think prologues are crazy, unless it's like Book 3 and you need a "Previously On" kinda section. I treat prologues as Marvel Movie Post-Credit scenes. OPTIONAL, but they can build hype for the next story.

[neverwonderneverremember]

sleep is stolen time. don't let them take it from you anymore. tonight. we are staying up. til one billion o clock.

[novalockpublish]

There are 24 hours in a day. I bought a clock that allegedly shows the time for all 24 of em. I intend to bear witness to its accuracy.

[thememedaddy]

[novalockpublish]

A grad student

[importantcatpics]

[novalockpublish]

a chinchilla in a cat body

[catchymemes]

[novalockpublish]

I also feel this way. It might be sad, but I've learned that everything is temporary. I don't have to be around forever, I can enjoy the time with them that I have and when they inevitably leave or we part ways, I can enjoy the memory. And in truth, good memories is a big part of what this life thing is all about.

[thememedaddy]

[novalockpublish]

I fail to see the difference...

[thememedaddy]

[novalockpublish]

I'd rather just be racially profiled and kicked out of the store... the f you mean "it's beautiful in my soul today". I'm on 3 mood stabilizers and half a can of Celsius while praying I can find a car that runs on $6/gal milk instead of $8/gal gas. It is September 14, 2001 in my soul EVERY DAY. Not the WORST day, but it's close enough!