Enjoying The Sun

ZIX Airport
Zerta, Sierra Benz
1:30 PM

Flight D521 (Sierra Benz -Saint Owhela) (100 passengers aboard)

"May I have your attention, please. This is the captain speaking. We've had a severe malfunctioning in one of our systems and, therefore, we'll be landing in the desert. It's a different kind of landing, but the aircraft is designed to cope with this situation. It is essential that you keep calm and follow the flight attendants' instructions. They're well-trained to deal with this situation.
I request that you keep seated until the aircraft comes to a complete stop and wait for further information. Thank you."

1 minute later the plane performed an emergency landing. There were about 10 casualties (for now?), a couple of people were injured and seeked medical treatment , but that was the least of their problems.
They were stuck in the middle of a nowhere. In the never ending desert of Sierra with almost no supplies. It was essential to think of a way to get back to civilization.

The captain tried using the radio transmitter in the cockpit to see if he could contact a nearby plane, it wasn't close enough to receive the signal. The passengers desperately tried ringing for help over and over, but no one answered.

The captain: " Remain calm. We will send out a group that will bring back help. We'll be home in no time"

A passenger: "We must wait here! They'll find us! We are still on the route, right?"

The captain: "No. We had to change the route to avoid a sand storm ahead of us and the radio didn't work at the time. Half an hour after changing the route, 2 of are 4 engines blowed up. There was nothing we could do!"

A passenger: "What about the luggage?"

The captain: "We had to eject half of it. We were going down too fast."

A passenger: "Let's see what remained."

The moans of the wounded cascaded throughout the craft. Children were crying as their parents tried to quieten them, reassure them that it was okay, themselves not believed by their own words. Matt sighed once more as he checked his phone, searching for any possibility of a signal. Nothing. He switched off the device, intending to save battery if he could find signal later on.

"At least there's an upside," he thought has he tucked his phone into his pocket. "I won't have to deal with those astronomical roaming charges!" But these were just thoughts to quell his growing anxiety. The air was filled with despair, with so many wounded. The plane was mostly dark, with most of the window covers closed to shut out the harsh light of the sun.

Matt tapped the shoulder of the person who sat next to him - a blonde woman who appeared to be in her early 20s, which was about the same age as him. She was grimacing in pain at the nasty laceration on the back of her right calf, blood trickling down her leg from the wound.

"Hey," he said, gesturing at the cut, "I can help with that, I'll just be a minute" He rushed to the bathroom and thoroughly cleaned his hands and filled a small cup with more water, and returned to the woman within a few seconds.

He got up from his seat after unbuckling the seatbelt, careful not to spill the water on the tray table, and checked for his bag in the overhead locker, before opening it to check if it was there. After a minute of furious searching, he almost gave up, until, in the pile of items on his chair, he saw a flash of red. Yes, there it was - his first-aid kit! But it was small, and could only be used for a few people. But at least he had that all too vital first-aid kit.

Matt then addressed the wound - a long, but thin and rather shallow cut, about fifteen centimetres long, along the side of the right calf, with not much bleeding. He retrieved a small bottle of heavily diluted povidone iodine in a pocket of the kit, and used the dropper to trickle several drips into the wound. The woman inhaled sharply in pain, but Matt took no notice as he continued.

Making sure the wound was coated with iodine, he took out a small pair of scissors from within - 4cm, barely allowed past security - and cut a small rectangle of gauze and a strip of cotton about twenty by seven centimetres, before applying the gauze to the wound, and wrapping it tight with the cotton.

"There you go." he said to her.

"Thanks for that." she said. "By the way, my name's Lucy. Yours?"

"Matt. I'm from Corden, in Xentherida. What about you?"

"I'm a Xentheridan too; grew up in Asyncia. Came here for a tour of Sebland."

"Another Xentheridan, eh. How the hell did we end up in this mess?"

Markus Zseler loved to chew his words before he spoke. His English was decent and even if he didn't pay attention to what he said, he'd still manage to spit out an understandable sentence, albeit riddled with grammatical errors. Nonetheless he was quite proud of his progress, having picked up conversant English in a couple of months. He had taken a few courses in college and he was by no means afraid of the language. He loved the sound of the English, especially when his bombshell beauty of a teacher spoke in her fancy rhotic accent, with the curled R's. He loved languages in general, but he'd started English first, and he always liked reading whole encyclopedia articles in English or just hearing English spoken around him.

Until now.

Incessant chatter filled the dark hatch as passengers began freeing themselves from their straps and filling the aisles. They were headed nowhere in particular; in the distance, beyond the backs of a few heads, he could spot a small gathering of the front-row passengers talking and pointing with the blue-uniformed crew. The attendants -- pretty ladies about five years older than Markus -- wore half-hearted smiles and went around trying to keep the passengers in their seats.

Markus chuckled in his head for a few seconds, wondering how'd he get here. Then reality struck him in the face so hard he keeled back in his chair, wide-eyed and staring out at the gloomy rocky desert outside, at the mountains in the distance. No life around for miles. Stranded. This wasn't a dream. His heart clenched as he tried thinking up a phrase in German, French, English, Chinese, something to help him, maybe a prayer he'd remember from somewhere or an old Stoic saying about being brave and carrying on in the face of adversity. But he was now in adversity, and he didn't how to carry on. He was just a college student and he knew nothing about surviving in the 'real world', much less about surviving in -- the actual real world.

"Fuck." His favorite English curse. The ffff sound was just so delightful to make. By instinct now his front teeth closed down on his bottom lip and the air that slipped through became the ffff that became the uck as his lips opened and then the back of his throat clogged. It fit his agony right now. "Fuck!" he exclaimed again, in Kannexan-accented English. It felt better than the Lord's Prayer.

Boraz Ulex sat silently in his seat, listening to everything around him. He had suffered from minor cuts where his seat belt had tugged to restrain him, but these were not problematic and he did not spend much time attending to them.

He was a high school student, living in Orionus with his parents and his younger sister. He did well in school, getting 9s and 10s in most of his classes. Outside of his classes, he read, followed politics, listened to music, played video games, and wrote songs with the aid of his school computer. He had many friends, some of them female, but none of them were all that close to him. He preferred it that way- interpersonal relationships and social skills were difficult, and friends were good as social meatshields, but he didn't really feel the need to pour out his emotions to people.
He was small, 1.68 meters and quite thin, and he generally dressed in whatever was comfortable for the weather with no regard to what others thought of him. It was a fashion trend that had served him well all his life.

Ulex glanced at his phone. No signal. He sighed and switched it back over to airplane mode, where it had been for most of the flight. His battery was still at 85% and he had brought along a few portable chargers anyway in case he needed them, but he doubted that the phone would come in handy again until he was rescued.

It all crashed down on him again. He was on a downed plane, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by strangers. What had been an innocent trip out to visit his relatives in Sierra had gone wrong, and he would be lucky to make it out alive.

He glanced into his carry-on at his water bottle. He was a bit thirsty, but he decided to wait. He'd probably need it more later...