It has already commenced. Passengers who know that their airplane is in the water are not inclined to wait for orders from flight crew to start opening the emergency exits. The aft ones have two flight attendants stationed there to make sure they don't get opened if they're halfway underwater; the overwing ones are already open, as is one of the front ones. The inflatable yellow slides take a little while to deploy, but then there they go.

He opens the other front door, and herds people out. From up here in the front it doesn't look like the plane is taking on water, but then it wouldn't. The real test of whether they landed just right is how much water the back is taking on. 

You're supposed to be able to evacuate a plane in ninety seconds. You usually have ninety seconds and you often don't have longer. Human beings being human beings, some of them will go for the overhead bins and some of them will be wrangling three toddlers. They are not all off the plane in ninety seconds.

In three minutes, though, the only two people remaining on the plane are the captain and the lead flight attendant. They walk its length, checking that every seat is empty. There's only about a foot of water in the aft, really. 

"One seventy five, right?"

"Yeah." It's going to be very difficult to get a good count. They're using all six life rafts and people are still standing on the wings of the plane and at least one person swum for shore to get help.

"Well, none of them are here. Let's go."

They go down the slide. It detaches from the side of the plane. The not-yet-sinking plane. He had intended to stand - the rafts are fairly crowded - but when he tries it doesn't quite happen. Someone is trying to thank him. He doesn't really know what to do with that. 

The man who swam over from the seadragon reaches the dock and doesn't quite possess the upper arm strength to haul himself up onto it, but of course they get a hold of him and haul him up. He doesn't speak Taldane. He doesn't speak Hallit. This exhausts the language knowledge of these dock workers.

He indicates with gestures that he would like them to approach the dragon. They indicate back with gestures that this seems terribly ill-advised, really. He indicates more emphatically that ...it's a baby sea-dragon? This is not really reassuring. 

But Vellumis has called many people to its defense who are usually busy about important work elsewhere, and some of them are wizards, and some are both wizards and skilled in diplomatic negotiations with dragons, and shortly there is someone present who can weave the magic about him that lets him speak in the tongues of strangers. 

"What does the seadragon want?"

       "What does the - what? We want you to go take the boats and go rescue everybody! A bunch of them are kids! Some of them are on the wings of the plane and it might sink!!!"

" - and the seadragon won't eat the boats when they draw close?" the wizard says skeptically. He can indeed see the horde of innocent children. The seadragon would not be the first seadragon that could look like a flock of civilians. That he cannot pierce the illusion means little; it is obviously a very powerful seadragon.

       "- do you mean the airplane? It's - it's a machine, it doesn't eat people, and it's not going to be doing a lot of being an airplane anymore, either, is it? Come on, are you really all going to watch a bunch of people drown -"

"The airplane was your - ship? But it's not meant to be in the water?"

       The soaking wet man takes a deep breath. "No. No, it is not meant to be in the water. It's a fucking airplane. It was - taking people from Honolulu to LA, okay? But something went wrong, and - god damnit, we need help. And you can help or get out of my way so I can go talk to someone else."

       "Who is the captain of your airplane?"

"- uh, he said his name but I forgot. He'll be back at the plane, probably, with everyone else."

        "Can he speak to us?"

"If you get the hell over there with your boats, you bet he can."

        "The art of translation I am employing makes your words sound very blasphemous," says the wizard disapprovingly. And then he gestures dramatically, says an ancient word of power, and takes off soaring through the air towards the airplane and its people. 

"What the actual fuck."

Captain Davidson blinks blearily at the...flying person. That does seem to be what he is seeing. Possibly the decision to not think about what the fuck was going on, though it seemed like a reasonable decision at the time, is now going to come back to bite him. 

           "May I speak to the captain of the airplane?" says the flying person.

At that he finds he does after all have it in him to stand up. "That's me. Captain Andrew Davidson. What do you need."

         "Captain Davidson. Would you be willing to come back with me to Vellumis so we can learn more about this airplane and this situation?"

"Sorry," he says, "what? No! Absolutely not! There are children here, and this plane might be sinking. You can get every person on my plane all out of here and to safety, and then we can talk. One hundred and seventy five."

 The flying person descends and hovers. "Sorry, one hundred and seventy five what?"

" - one hundred seventy five souls on board. The plane. Well, they're not on the plane now, but - one hundred seventy five people it's my job to get to Los Angeles. Or at least to dry land... where are we."

"Vellumis. ...the plane doesn't pose a danger to ships drawing near it?"

" - no? Or at least I don't think they had any problems in New York."

"All right. Any injured?"

"I don't know. I would assume so. We were in a plane crash."

"I'll get a priest out here and some boats."

"Well I sure hope no one's injured in a way where you need to call a priest. Just call, you know, an ambulance. ...where is Vellumis relative to, say, Los Angeles."

"The translation is offering me 'the angels'? We are on a different plane from the angels."

"No, just the city. It's named after the angels, I guess, but it's just a city. In America."  

"I haven't heard of it. Will the airplane take offense if I go inside it?"

"I am now concerned I have a head injury or something."

        "It's not you, the man has a screw loose," says a nearby passenger helpfully. "It's an airplane. It can't take offense at things. It's a bad idea to go inside, though, because it might sink."

"The airplane is a construct, a machine, and it is unsafe to enter only because it may sink and that would make it difficult to leave?"

"Yes. You said you were going to call us some goddamned boats." 

The wizard looks affronted. "We will rescue your people but the boats will not be goddamned boats. We are a people in the service of the Good gods."

"- sorry. The - divinely blessed boats. The urgently needed boats. The boats that will cause these people to not drown."