Downgazing on green bubbles of Virginian land, I think of cauldrons and the witches rising out of the earth, not to derail us with prophecies or severed sailors' thumbs, but to reassure as that 'Yes, you're right, it really is worth looking at'. That's all magic's ever been - a reconjuring of wonder, dosed with a healthy amount of fear at the prospect of a 10,000 foot drop onto scorched farmlands.

Months ago my girlfriend talked about how the winter forest on the flank of a Devonshire vale looked like the internal airways of a human lung. The land always looks, from enough of a distance, like some microscopic miracle.

All the best people I know would probably have been accused of witchcraft many seasons hence, seeing strange things in the world, marvelling at the bubbles, sometimes understanding their molecular structure, or how to heal them beneath a thin slide of glass.

Some witch or warlock must have conjured this aircraft with its dragon turbines and tongue heating up a world we can now look down on. My ears ring like castanets as I press to the window, but I feel no pain from pressure. The brain and the drums can handle the drop, for now, and if anything betrays nerves at being so high it's the sputter of a water bottle being opened. We humans have got too used to molecules barking around, bubbling, boiling up. If I'm lucky, all I see are spells.