Airplane Troubles

Layla reached the airport in plenty of time - she ran there, not even wanting to try to navigate the city's traffic. There were some advantages to packing light. She hurried inside; as much as she was used to travelling, she always started buzzing with almost-butterflies each journey she took. There was something thrilling about the whole world changing around her.

So her mind was on that as she navigated the airport. Security was as tiresome as ever, but she deposited her bag, and went to the boarding lounge with nothing but the clothes off her back, headphones in her pocket, and her phone. She shot another update-text back at Marc, got an inexplicably Spanish response, and sat down, looking up at the clock.

Half an hour later and she was on the plane. There was a screen in the back of the seat in front of her: she quickly cycled it to display the time to destination - five and a half hours. She'd been on longer jaunts.

Layla got comfortable. She shimmied into the window seat; she hadn't planned to get that, but it was always a nice bonus when it did happen. A tired-looking stranger sat down next to her, and she nodded politely at them before resuming her wait for the flight to start. The person next to her blearily slumped down; apparently not everyone made adjustments to time zones well.

So much of travel was just waiting. She pulled out her headphones anyway, in case there was anything she wanted to watch, and switched her phone to airplane mode. She barely paid attention to the very familiar, unchanging safety announcements, and when at last the plane took off, she felt the **** push her back into her seat and smiled to herself.

Finally. On her way back... huh, it was weird to think of it as a home, but it was certainly where she'd be spending a fair bit of time. Though she'd definitely like to go back to Egypt again for a bit - and indeed, probably would.

Vaguely, she wondered if she could arrange a geographical arrangement with Taweret. It would be neat if she got the suit while she was in the country, if just because she liked the looks she got. An Egyptian superhero; she smiled to herself.

For a moment, she thought of Taweret's costume, fond. Then she faltered.

Okay, something felt different. It was a few degrees colder, somehow, and the chair was suddenly... coarser, the buckle of the seatbelt very cold against-

Layla looked down. It took a genuine effort to not yelp - her eyes went wide, an exhalation escaped her lips, and she frozen in place. She blinked as if that would change anything.

But nope, she was naked. Naked! She was sat in the window seat of an airplane, a view of the inside of a cloud just passing by the window, and every stitch of clothing that she had been wearing was, well, gone. The plane's seatbelt crossed over her stomach, and otherwise there was just pale brown skin on display. Toned legs, the patch of dark hair between them, her breasts, her-

She gulped, and glanced sideways in a momentary panic. The person next to her snored loudly.

Okay, that was one brief, tiny shred of luck. Face flaming, Layla pushed herself back against the chair, as if she could somehow use the passenger beside her as cover. She crossed her arms tightly, expression mortified and mystified in equal measure, wriggling as if she could vanish into the seat.

What? This wasn't possible. Well, okay, no, she'd been an avatar to an ancient god, hypothetically it was absolutely possible, but still why had it happened? One moment she was just pondering, the next all her clothes had...

Layla swallowed, and bit her lip, mind racing. She couldn't see her clothes, couldn't see where they'd gone. The best she had was the pouch in the back of the chair in front of her, but clutching a laminated plane safety guide to her chest wasn't much of a substitute for being dressed.

Had anyone noticed? She had to imagine a flesh-coloured blur in someone's peripheral vision would stick out. She squirmed again, silently thanking gods that she really hoped weren't on the plane at just that moment that the person closest to them was sleeping. For now, it seemed their presence combined with the number of chairs had mostly concealed her - still, she knew she was more than visible if someone just turned the wrong way.

She would've started swearing if she didn't want to stay completely silent.

After a minute of frozen, nude panic, she remembered that the plane supplied a blanket; even if this wasn't an overnight flight, they were standard. Quickly, Layla reached forward with a bare, shaking arm, hastily snatching it out from the pocket. She held it on her lap, avoiding being too far forward, untangling it quickly.

It was... well, not as big as she'd have wanted, but it was certainly better than nothing. Once it was flat, she could hug it over her breasts, and it went about halfway down her thighs, covering up a fair bit. She let out a slow, shaky breath.

Okay, that was step one, she told herself. There was a step two, right? There had to be a step two.

Wait. Layla glanced down at herself, face burning. Okay, technically she was decent, but she was also making it incredibly obvious that she was naked under the blanket; carefully, she tugged it up a little further, the cloth not nearly as comfy as clothes. Eventually, it reached the height of her shoulders.

She couldn't speak for anyone else, but she knew that when she saw bare shoulders without so much as a strap peering out from over a blanket or towel, she thought naked. Maybe she was just paranoid, but for the moment that was front and center in her mind. But if the blanket went over her shoulders, she could at least pretend to have on a shirt and be, well, not stark naked on a plane flight.

How was she even meant to explain that? Layla swallowed again.

The bottom of the blanket was, well, not as high as she'd have liked. She slipped her arms under the blanket to let it drape over her shoulders, and tried to tug it down a little; she wriggled, feeling like a minor slouch away from her lack of any clothes on her lower half suddenly being very obvious.

She could just have been wearing short shorts, Layla told herself. Yeah. Shorts were common enough in the Egyptian heat after all.

The heat in her cheeks didn't diminish all that much at that thought. She looked nervously sideways again, trying to convince herself that no one was staring.

It wasn't like she could even run back home - she was five hours away from civilisation, and the only way she could move entailed rushing past rows of strangers.

She shifted a little, hyperaware of the feeling of her bare thighs pressing together, and the rough fabric of the airplace seat against her back.

Where were her clothes?! Were they even anywhere? Times like this, she wouldn't have minded her avatar outfit back...

She tugged on the blanket nervously, doing her best to think.