The turbulence had been relentless that afternoon, shaking the plane in ways that made even seasoned flyers grip their armrests a little tighter. I was halfway through my audiobook, my earbuds jammed in as a kind of protective bubble, pretending the man beside me didn’t audibly sigh every time I adjusted in my seat. He seemed to be a permanent fixture of irritation, a reminder that shared space in the sky often came with a side of judgment. My eyes traced the curve of the cabin, the rows of passengers quietly staring into screens or staring at nothing at all, each of us wrapped in our own private worlds despite the physical closeness.

And then, completely out of nowhere, I felt it—a tiny tug on my sleeve. I looked down, startled, and there he was: a little boy, no older than three or four, his hair a soft mop of chestnut that fell into his wide, red-rimmed eyes. The kind of eyes that tell a story you can’t ignore. He didn’t speak at first; he didn’t need to. The gesture alone—a small hand gripping my sleeve, almost insistently—carried a weight that made everything else fade into background noise.