The Hot Air Balloon – Part 1: Before Dawn

"You didn't tell him," said Yasemin.

"I may have omitted it," said Kerem.

They stood in a dark field before dawn, among eighty enormous balloons spreading on the grass like sleeping animals. The air was cold and smelled of propane. Burners roared. Lanterns bobbed in the dark. Their pilot, a stout cheerful man called Osman, was loading the wicker basket and whistling.

She was thirty-six, a pharmacist, in a puffer jacket and a woolly hat. He was thirty-nine, an architect, in a leather jacket, with a grin of terrible innocence. Ten years, two children, one mortgage. Their anniversary gift to each other had been the balloon: a dream from their first date, when they'd stared at a photograph in a café.

"I'm afraid of heights," she said.

"It's only a basket."

"It's a basket in the sky."

"Hold my hand."

She held his hand. Osman helped them aboard. The burner blasted, a rush of heat, and the balloon filled slowly above them, swaying like a living thing. The ground fell away.

She shut her eyes.

"Yasemin," said Kerem, softly. "Open them."

She opened them. Below, the valley lay spread in blue shadow, thousands of conical rock towers like a sleeping city. A line of gold touched the eastern horizon. All around, hundreds of balloons rose silently from the earth, glowing in the dark, red and blue and yellow, like lanterns released into the sky.

"Oh," she whispered.

"I know."

"It's the most beautiful thing."

"Told you."

The sun came up. The rock towers turned rose, then gold. She forgot to be afraid.

"Can I ask you something?" said Yasemin, her eyes shining.

"Yes."

"Why did you hide it from the pilot?"

"Because you'd have said no," said Kerem. "And then you'd have missed this."

"Green?" she said, the old word.

"Green," said Kerem. "Very green. Look. The whole world."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Soft Landing.