1-Wickaninnish Inn

They arrived in Tofino, B.C., two days ago and booked a room at the Wickaninnish Inn. Today they would be checking out and flying across the mountains to Campbell River on the island’s eastern shore.

Jonas crouched by the bed, looking for his pilot’s licence. With a sigh that came from somewhere much older than the present, he thought of things he’d lost before—things far more precious than a licence.

Seven years ago, it had been his first wife, Portia, and the son she never got to hold. Sometimes the memory came at him unbidden, sudden and rough. Seven years. Had it been that long already? She had died giving birth to their first and only child. No one could have anticipated the anomaly that had been forming in her brain. His son died three days after he was born.

They had only been married for fifteen months when that dark day assaulted him. They had both married later in life. He was thirty-five and she thirty. Up to that point, he had considered himself a confirmed bachelor, given his dedication to the military—but her dedication had been no less complete.

They met in his squadron’s logistics department. She had been a Captain and was often part of the tactical and training mission briefings. Her no-nonsense and precise way of doing things had always intrigued him, even before he realized he was becoming attracted to her.

He still remembered Portia’s exacting precision—how she’d line up her coffee mug with the edge of a file folder, how she’d tease him for being late by exactly thirty seconds. She’d been all order and logic, a mirror of himself then.

Elayna was the opposite: chaos in silk pyjamas, her laughter always one step ahead of him—-but it never left him behind.

But this morning, as he caught her reflection in the window, with that warm smile of hers—the ache turned into something quieter. Gratitude, maybe. And somehow, that balanced him.

He rose to his feet and saw her eyes focused on something in the future… or the past. Either way, she was somewhere else—probably thinking up another playful prank at his expense.

Outside, the waves at Chesterman Beach crashed against the rocks with a steady  rhythm that merged memories into the present.

Elayna’s thoughts had drifted again, not to mischief this time, but to the beginning of all this—to the strange chain of events that had led her here, to this quiet room overlooking the Pacific.

It was almost six months to the day since she’d retired as Director of Flight Operations for Czech Airlines, the Czech Republic’s national carrier. After twenty-five years of postings throughout Europe and the Middle East, she’d decided it was finally time to live at a slower pace. Especially since she had never given herself the opportunity to settle down. Oh, there had been offers—plenty of them actually, but none had fostered the right conviction. She’d often wondered if she was simply too particular for her own good.

A month after retirement, accompanied by her two closest friends, she decided to take a road trip from Prague to Germany. Everything went smoothly until, just outside the eastern outskirts of Berlin, their car coughed once and gave up entirely. After contacting roadside assistance, they were met a short time later by a local representative who took them into the city. His name was Jonas.

At first, she thought he was a bit too intense—polite, professional, and maddeningly methodical. But as they chatted on the drive, she learned he was also recently retired, after twenty-eight years flying military aircraft for the German Air Force. That revelation softened her view.

Elayna would never have thought such a regimented, orderly man would interest her; given her mischievous, irreverent nature, they should have repelled each other. And yet…

That unexpected encounter on the Autobahn had turned into several weeks of a growing long distance relationship. Just two months into this new chapter in her life, at a time when he surprised her visiting her in Prague, she proposed to him outright. She must have mistaken his stunned silence for affirmation, because within a month they were married in a quiet civic ceremony at the Old Town Hall.

The second clue to her ongoing penchant for surprises came on their wedding day. She’d presented him with a gold-lined, black velvet box containing a silver key. The key, as it turned out, accessed a private hangar at EuroJet’s Intercontinental FBO at Prague’s Vodochody Airport. Inside, Elayna had unveiled her wedding gift—a customized, extended range variant of the Italian-made Avanti Piaggio turboprop aircraft. Even now, Jonas was still in a subdued state of shock. She had yet to reveal how she’d managed it, but they’d been travelling the world in it ever since.

“Elayna? Elayna?”

Her focus returned to the present. Jonas was kneeling beside the bed again, his expression equal parts patience and amusement.

“You wouldn’t happen to know where my pilot’s licence is, would you?”

“Licence? What licence?” she asked, trying not to smile.

His love for her deepened again—not in the way he’d once loved Portia, not from  shared history, but from the sheer astonishment of finding the healing light of unconditional love and acceptance once again.

The morning air over Tofino was clear, a thin band of mist still clinging to the treeline as the Avanti lifted smoothly from the runway and climbed out over the Pacific. Jonas handled the throttles with his usual precision, eyes flicking between instruments and the horizon ahead.

Their Isle of Man registered Avanti Piaggio, M-JEGC, had already carried them halfway around the world. He had filed a VFR flight plan with Nav Canada and was mindful of keeping a careful lookout for other traffic within the area.

Beside him, Elayna rested her arm on the centre console, watching the way his focus narrowed as they levelled off at nine thousand five hundred feet.

“Still convinced I lost that licence on my own?” he asked, voice calm but carrying that dry undertone she loved.

She smiled toward the windscreen. “If you stop losing things, I’ll have to find new ways to keep you busy.”

He gave a small, resigned laugh—the kind that lived halfway between amusement and surrender—and the tension in his shoulders eased. For a while they flew in comfortable silence, the hum of the counter-rotating props providing a counterpoint to the contentment he currently felt.

Below them, the spine of Vancouver Island stretched eastward in folds of green ridges and shadowed valleys. Jonas glanced at the terrain, then at her. Sunlight caught in her hair. He hadn’t expected to find this kind of life again—not after the years of grief, when even flying had lost its meaning.

Elayna sensed his thoughts drifting and tapped the altimeter with one painted nail. “Don’t drift too far, my love,” she said lightly, taking his hand in hers.

“I know,” he replied, and her touch grounded him more than the instruments ever could.

When they were about ten miles west of Campbell River, Jonas began a slow descent and switched frequencies, tuning the Mandatory Frequency (MF) for the airport. He keyed the mic.

“Campbell River Radio, Avanti Mike-Juliet-Echo-Golf-Charlie, one-zero miles west, nine thousand descending VFR to circuit, inbound for landing, Campbell River.”

The familiar voice of Flight Service came back over the headset, calm and routine.

“Mike-Juliet-Echo-Golf-Charlie, Campbell River Radio, roger. No reported traffic. Wind calm, altimeter three-zero-one-seven. Report joining right downwind for Runway One-Two.”

“Three-zero-one-seven. Will join right downwind RWY12, M-JEGC.”

Elayna leaned forward slightly, gazing down through the windscreen as the shoreline came into view. “Doesn’t it feel like something’s waiting for us down there?”

He smiled, eyes narrowing on the runway ahead. “You say that every time we land somewhere new.”

“One day I’ll be right.”

The approach was smooth, the landing precise—the Avanti’s trailing-link gear making almost no sound as they touched down. As they taxied toward the terminal, Elayna looked sideways at him with that faint, knowing smile. He knew that look. She was extraordinarily adept at surprising him. Somewhere, at some point in time, something else was about to be revealed.