Mile-High Malediction Part IV: Lift-Off

Decades passed. Bones aged.

Priya could barely keep herself upright these days. She’d lived a full life—even tried out a marriage or two. But no matter how many years passed, part of her never forgot that moonlit beach, his soft saffron robe.

The truth had come crashing down after that seventh, fateful flight. The media framed it as classic bureaucratic incompetence. The President looked bad—which he’d been really trying to avoid.

Turns out, the FBI had long suspected Shen-Yun was a Chinese psy-op. The CIA, however, was convinced Priya had ties to Muslim extremists. She was Hindu.

The usual story happened. Agencies sabotaged each other; fiery emails flew, and Thanksgivings were ruined. Top officials panicked over the optics—especially the racial ones. 

Redactions never seemed to get rid of them.

Everything got swept under the rug—until ICE tried to play hero. Priya’s call had tipped them off. 

They couldn’t understand why no one had tried deportation.

After it all came out, Priya’s ex reached out, saying he wanted to try again. She should’ve said no, but she was lonely. He was jealous of Shen-Yun. 

Eventually, he told her to let him go.

Why not? Shen-Yun had already gone back to China, hating the spotlight. She’d apparently inspired him to find his mom.

But she was 79 now. And Shen-Yun still hadn’t faded. Not even after years of PTSD therapy. Or all the therapists who warned her of trauma bonds.

She knew it was something else.

She just didn’t know why. Why she cared. Why it happened. Why she still felt a connection after 50 years.

She’d found comfort in her favorite cosmology programs. The universe apparently began with unusually low entropy—smooth, ordered, and inextricably bound. Until expansion flung it apart.

But some connections remained bound—despite expansion, despite chaos. Quantum entanglement, they called it. Particles forever linked across infinite space. 

Like distance meant nothing. Like time meant nothing.

Eventually, in a haze of retirement boredom, she started leaving him voicemails. Years ago. The number was old. She never got a reply. But it calmed her—so she kept calling.

“I saw this amazing dance performance. You would have loved it. So beautiful, so majestic, fluttering through the wind,” one rang.

Then, a week ago, a letter arrived. Saffron envelope. A name she didn’t recognize.

A young monk wrote from Shen-Yun’s monastery. They’d apparently been telling stories of the “black-jacket witch” for years—debating her cosmic origin like scripture.

Priya chuckled in joyful disbelief, memories streaming back.

The story had gone cold—until Shen-Yun started getting her voicemails. He’d listened to every single one. The whole monastery caught him beaming for weeks.

He’d listened?  Priya was too happy to take it personally. She turned the page. 

The letter explained that by then, Shen-Yun had started chemotherapy. He didn’t want that to be the last chapter. So he made a plan to set things right.

Enclosed was an invitation to Shen-Yun’s funeral. He’d specifically asked for her, it said. Said it was “necessary.”

She was stunned. It had been decades. And yet, she couldn’t help but grin.

She made plans to fly. Sun Country Airlines.

She strode into the monastery, walker in hand, her old leather jacket still slung across her shoulders. Monks murmured as she approached.

A child gasped. “The witch! The witch of legend!”

The monks led her inside and showed her photographs of Shen-Yun—beaming, teaching, dancing barefoot across temple floors. And after the memorial, they returned with a large saffron box.

“He left this for you, madam.”

She opened it. Letters. Dozens—no, hundreds. Her hands opened the pages before her mind caught up.

His voice filled her with stupid joy. Absurd jokes filled the pages. About cheetahs. About cranes. About Predator.

The final letter was dated shortly before he died. The tone had changed.

He wrote that the monks believed they’d untangled their karmic threads on that moonlit beach. In their view, the Buddha would celebrate it—freedom from attachment.

The tale was done.

But not for him. 

Not truly. He’d secretly hoped their paths would cross again. But fate never did its part.

But when he heard Priya’s first message, he made a choice: “What is unbound can be bound again.”

She read that line again and again.

He said their karma wasn’t settled. Not after all the voicemails, all the letters. He had one final request. Something insane to seal the deal.

He asked her to scatter his ashes.

She froze. Did she deserve this? Had she really known him?

But something fluttered. And she said yes.

So she went back. Back to the place—the time—she’d always longed to return to. The moonlit island was easier to find now, coated with modern development.

And on the beach where they’d once held each other, she scattered his ashes into the bubbling ocean. Alongside them rested the burnt remnants of her leather jacket and old plane tickets.

She started sobbing, as she began the ascent home. But then—laughter. 

She thought back to the absurdity of it all. The plane crashes. The accusations. The tangled parachutes. The moment they finally stopped running.

And then it hit her. For an entire lifetime, she had wondered why. The Buddha had one answer. Her cosmology programs had another. But she realized it didn’t matter.

Because despite it all—here she was, on a ridiculous quest. Whatever the cosmic force, she was the one choosing it.

“Maybe … It was us,” she grinned. “Maybe we’ve done this before. And maybe … We’ll do it again.”