Airports are like a back cover blurb for humanity. You can't get the whole story there, but you'll get the basic idea.

Daniel sat in the shoeshine chair, one muddy boot propped on the opposite knee. No one was there to shine his shoes, though if they were, he'd certainly had to have paid extra. If the leather had ever had any shine, and he couldn't remember a time when it did, it was buried now beneath the dust of a hundred nations.

He Watched.

People hurried by. Humans were always in such a rush. Years ago, he'd formed a theory that they rushed because they had an innate sense of their own limited time on earth. Now fewer and fewer believed in a life after this one, so they ran through their days even faster. So much to do and all with death constantly looming over one shoulder.

Of course, Death wasn't such a bad guy. He was just trying to help. Still, he was scary, even to Daniel. He radiated an energy like the sun, if the sun burned cold and black.

Thinking of Death led him to think of his best mate, who also happened to be Death's oldest child. Max was on a fun little adventure of his own. Daniel was burning with curiosity to know how it was going, but it was the kind of thing the poor, sheltered guy had to do alone. For now, at least.

A family rushed by, speaking in rapid Italian. The wife's shoes cost more than most people in the world earned in a year. Her hair was flawless. Everything in between was pretty fantastic as well, he noticed with a grin. The husband had dark circles under his eyes. His suit was rumpled.

Poor sap. He'd married above his pay grade.

Three low-level Slovakian politicians ran toward a gate. An attendant had just made the final boarding call. She wore a fetching red skirt that blessed him with a view of her shapely thighs very nearly to the curve of her hips.

An old lady with sharp blue eyes peering out of a wavy sea of wrinkles shuffled along, holding her grandson's hand. The boy whined about wanting sweets. Her expression was as sour as moldy lemons. No one would have ever guessed she had just the chocolate bar he wanted in her pocket and was waiting to give it to him on the plane. Her thin, downturned lips gave no insight into the sheer joy she took in the boy's presence.

Well, they might have noticed, if they knew how to watch the way Daniel Watched.

A Russian man in work-out pants and a white cotton tee-shirt meandered toward gate 4A, fancy white earbuds plugged into his ears, hands in his pockets.

Daniel shook his head. The guy was bad at his job. No one meandered at airports. They were racing, or they were at a dead stop, waiting. A spy worth a pittance would know that.

The angel dropped his boot to the platform, stood up with an enormous, spine-cracking stretch and hopped down to the tiled floor.

The spy jumped and spun to face him with wide eyes.

Daniel chuckled. "Sorry, mate. Didn't mean to startle you. Just trying to get the blood flowing again." He didn't speak in any language used by humans, but the man laughed along with him.

"Думаю, я мечтал," he said. Guess I was dreaming.

"I hope she was in it," Daniel said, gesturing with his chin toward the long-legged flight attendant.

The man wagged appreciative eyebrows and resumed his meandering.

Daniel walked at a more human pace, leaving the spy trailing behind him.

The girls working for the airline he intended to use wore blue instead of red. Their skirts were of a modest cut that reached their knees. It made him wonder what they were hiding under there.

Of all God's beautiful creations, women had to be the very best.

The tall, dark-haired beauty at the gate flashed her perfect white teeth at him. "Your boarding pass, please?" The ancient rhythms of Eastern-European speech flowed from her pink tongue like the crystal water of the mountain streams of her homeland.

Daniel returned her smile. "Anything for you." He held out his empty hand.

She reached out to take the ticket she imagined she saw there and let her fingers linger on his a moment longer than strictly necessary.

He winked. "Thanks, doll." And then he was strolling across the jet bridge.

The pilot was at the door of the plane speaking to another flight attendant in a whisper punctuated by sharp, frantic gestures. The flight attendant nodded along, chewing her bottom lip. Her eyes were wide. She didn't blink the whole time Daniel watched. This sight did not inspire confidence.

Stepping through, he stopped for a moment with one hand on the bit of the airplane's outer body that showed. The vibrations that gave the illusion of physical form to his body met the vibrations that gave the illusion of physical form to the plane and the wave of energy that resulted, a teeny, tiny, atomically microscopic pulse that was more powerful than any other fuel yet discovered by humans rippled around the vehicle toward the engine.

There. An electrical short just behind the wing.

He formed a very clear intention and let it glide through him in the same way and, just like that, the wire was whole. Someday the humans would learn the same trick. Not until they learned to appreciate the interconnectedness of all matter, though. They had a way to go, still.

"Is everything OK, sir?"

He blinked and looked up at the pilot, who was at least six inches taller than him. "Sure. Just putting a little blessing on the plane."

The pilot painted a professional-looking smile onto his face. "From your lips to God's ears."

Daniel chuckled, inclined his head, and stepped from the jetway onto the floor of the plane. Turning toward the tail end, he sensed the pilot checking the doorway where he'd stopped.

The little boy and his grandmother were in the seventh row. He happily munched on the chocolate bar. She looked up at Daniel and her eyes widened. It wasn't unusual for the very old and the very young to see and understand what those supposedly in their prime were too distracted to notice.

He held a finger to his lips.

She smiled and for a split second, he saw the handsome, unlined face of a twenty-two year old resistance fighter who spit in the eye of soldiers trying to enter a schoolyard.

He bowed his head out of respect and moved on until he found an empty seat. A fat man with a paper bag of takeout food occupied the space closest to the window and half of the other seat as well.

Daniel kept walking.

A woman in black leggings and a figure-hugging pink cashmere sweater sat alone in aisle sixteen. Her blonde curls danced on her shoulders when she turned her head to peer up at Daniel.

"I think this is my seat," he said in the language of Heaven.

"Then who am I to keep you from it?" She replied in Polish.

He ducked under the overhead bin and into the plush blue chair and drew the buckle across his waist.

"Are you afraid of flying?" she asked.

He laughed. "No," he answered in Polish. "I've been flying all my life. Haven't had a lethal crash landing yet."

Her pretty brow arched upward. "But you've had a non-lethal crash landing?"

"A few."

"I think that would scare me off flying forever."

"Not you," he guessed. Watch enough people over a long enough period of years, reading them becomes fairly easy. "You would fly again, and the flight after the crash would be the most exciting of your life. When the engines started your heart would race, and your palms would sweat, and you would drink in the adrenaline like ambrosia. The force of the plane pressing your spine against the back of the seat would be like the hand of a lover. Soaring through the air, you would laugh in the face of death."

Her lips, painted exactly the same shade of pink as her sweater, were slightly parted now. "But that's only if I survived." Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

"Don't worry, Princess." He leaned in close and matched her tone. "I'll protect you."

Her gaze dropped to his lips and lingered there a long moment before rising up to his eyes again. "You know who I am?"

He smiled, saying nothing.

"Please don't tell anyone. I am trying to travel quietly."

"You're not the kind of woman who goes through the world unnoticed," he told her. "But no one will learn your secret from me."

Dimples appeared when she smiled. "Thank you."

He held out a hand. "I'm Daniel."

"You may call me Zofia," she replied, shaking his hand.

"I would be honored."

The Russian spy bumped Daniel's leg on his way past. His eyes lingered a moment too long on Zofia. The guy had to be new at this. He took a seat a few rows back.

The crew launched into their routine, giving the spiel about seatbelts and emergency exits, oxygen masks, and floatation devices. Doors were closed and latched. Overhead bins were checked and secured. The soft hum of the engines turned into a low roar which Daniel was happy to hear sounded perfectly harmonious.

They were in the air, banking hard left over the city before he spoke to Zofia again.

"So tell me. Why are you making this trip? It's a long way from your home."

She shrugged. "Not so long, really. The world is a small place. Eastern Europe is practically a single village in the great scheme of things."

He couldn't argue with that. In the great scheme of things, Earth itself was a little rural outpost on the edge of a whole bunch of nothing. Why God picked this planet for his favorite pets, he'd never understand. He was grateful, though. It was one of his favorites. Salty oceans, freshwater rivers, classic rock, and two-legged girls. All the best things were on earth.

"Big news afoot in the little village, then? A birth? Death?" He leaned in close again, enjoying the musky aroma of her perfume. "Scandal?"

She laughed. It was the sound of sacred fairies tap dancing on tiny brass bells. "You're a troublemaker."

"Never real trouble. Just a bit of mischief."

A soft tone sounded over the speakers and the seatbelt sign blinked off.

Her eyes peregrinated over the peaks, valleys, and plains of his body, all the way down to the tips of his dusty boots and back again. In a throaty whisper she asked, "Ever make mischief in an airplane loo?"

He thought about it. The bedroom of a private jet, the floor of a military aircraft, and, on one memorable occasion, in the cockpit of a Boeing Airbus, but he couldn't remember ever once even entering an airplane restroom. "Can't say as I have."

"Well, then. You're overdue, don't you think?" Without waiting for a response she unclipped the belt from around her waist and sidled past him toward the aisle. He waited a respectable three and a half minutes before following her to the back of the plane.

The Russian spy looked up at him as he passed.

Daniel winked at him.

As it turned out, the airplane bathroom was astonishingly cramped, but the princess was unusually flexible and excited by a challenge.