I sit quietly on my bench with little to no expression on my face. Off in the distance, a whistle blows a faint cry into the wind and smoke pumps out of a worn-out engine like it’s slowly billowing out of an old man’s pipe. It reeks of coal here. The stench is unbearable, one of those where you hold your breath so long you almost turn blue to not smell it anymore. As if the stench isn’t bad enough on its own, the smoke has left the paint on the walls of this station as a variation of the same monotone gray over and over. Once, I think maybe the walls were blue and red, but I have no way to tell now. Sometimes, I think I’m colorblind until I notice books I’ve left settled in my lap. Luckily for me, the books I’ve picked up off the ground happen to be so vibrant I couldn’t mistake them for black or white or gray, even if I tried.
Currently, I’m reading a book someone left on the floor of this mammoth-size train station. I’m surprisingly well-read for a shadow, although I doubt I have much competition. I bet you’d never guess how many books I’ve found through my searches of this place, but it might help if you knew it’s three times the size of Earth’s largest airport, King Fahd International, measuring a total of almost 900 miles total. The book I found today is called Ishmael. I’m halfway through, marking a note on an especially intriguing page with my blue fountain pen when I hear my fellow spirits talking behind me.
“They’re gonna choose me this time ‘round,” The figure to my left announces as loud as he can to the figure on my right. Om seems sure of his statement, like he always is.
“Sure they are.” Séco rolls her eyes and smirks sarcastically. Om seems bothered, but I’ve learned to ignore them both and their angry antics after millions of years dealing with the same game. It’s not worth fighting anymore. Séco and Om don’t seem to have the same philosophy as I do, however, so they bicker in the background while I resume my note-taking on the philosophies of this novel.
Every time I see my friends, it’s like figuring out who they are all over again. Even with the whole “we only see each other every four hundred years” thing, their appearances intrigue me the most. Om has a sculpted face with broad, crisp edges. His chin comes to a point in a sort of triangle shape, ending in a couple hairs that threaten to grow into a full beard. His eyes are thin, but are so wide open so often you can hardly tell. Séco has a rounder face shape with sleep-deprived, droopy eyes. Her nose comes to a sharp point to juxtapose her mostly smooth and soft features. But that isn’t very interesting, as I’m sure you’d agree. They don’t look like normal people. They are two-dimensional silhouettes of where a figure should be, filled in with black so they look like black holes, pits of despair. The only thing I can see of them is their faces, like my friends are peeking through a funeral veil to get a breath of air.
Maybe I should be taking this moment with my fellow spirits in. We probably won’t all meet like this again for a while, but I don’t want to lie to myself and say that I’ll miss them. I won’t. I like the wait for the train best when I’m alone on this bench. Then I can read my books aloud to myself and no one will question my sanity.
The train whistle I’ve been hearing in the distance now comes to be so loud I don’t think my ears can take the blow. The train comes into my view, and Om is proven right. The train conductor waves Om’s dark body onto the vessel. Then I notice there are three seats, and that the conductor is beckoning all three of us out. Not once in a million years has a mission like this commenced. It’s always one of us, and sometimes, in a rare appearance, two of us board the train, but that’s always been the maximum.
“Are you sure?” Séco asks the conductor. He nods. She steps onto the carriage, but not without making sure to sit on the opposite side of Om. I always end up being in the middle, or those two would fight for hours. The only downside is that I can’t sit by the window, so instead I lean over Om’s knee with my elbow and try to observe what’s outside the train. Sadly, there’s nothing really to see. We’re going through the never ending tunnel so quickly all I can see is a blend of colors: beige, blue, and eventually green. At least it’s better than gray.
I pull my book out of my lap again. Now that we’re on the train, I feel slightly queasy reading it, but I don’t care. I read just as I have every time I board the train, slow enough to stop myself from vomiting, and fast enough I can get through the book at a reasonable pace. Even with this precaution, though, we’re going so fast the words blur after just a couple minutes of relentless focus. I sigh and slip the book under the carriage’s seat, where a tin coil leads all the way back to an opening in the ceiling above our bench. It slides through the slippery tunnel twice as fast as we’re going on the train. I estimate it’ll be back there by the time we reach our destination.
Now that I’ve lost my one method of entertainment, I notice that the carriage is deathly quiet, and neither Om nor Séco will offer a reason why until I look up to the front of the train and see that we’ve arrived.
It’s time to see what we’re doing here.
“You can get out now. All of you exit left, and I’ll be guiding you into your chosen locations,” The conductor tells us. This man doesn’t seem to like his job very much. His voice is dull and his eyes are strained, like he has to focus solely on keeping them awake. I notice that I’m entering narrator territory again, and I remind myself about what I heard from my last tour guide.
It’s a good skill to have, but don’t overuse it. After a while, good descriptions become mediocre because they can no longer be appreciated for their full worth.
I smile, hoping this tour guide is just as nice as the previous. My nonexistent feet hobble out after Séco’s, and Om’s after mine. The first thing I see when I emerge is the tour guide’s face, now bright and bubbly. There seems to have been a complete three-sixty tonal shift. I squint at him for a while until I notice that I’m the only one doing so. Both of my friends are looking elsewhere. One specific place else, really.
I follow Om and Séco’s eyes up to the mountains, cascading streams of light so soft and cold they look like they’ve been drawn into their landscape with oil paints and a palette knife. But the great landscape hasn’t caught their attention. Instead, the castle above it has. Half the size of the gorgeous monument, towering as tall as the clouds is a single bird. Blue, sharp, and fierce, the winged beast is scary enough as is, without being the size of hundreds of elephants.
“Holy gosh,” I whisper. Séco laughs at my vocabulary, and Om snickers just to join in. It’s not funny for very long though, as the bird has spotted us and is coming down at a record speed to meet us at the ground. I stagger back in fear as they plummet into the dirt, although I must admit my confusion was at an all-time high when our tour guide simply chuckled and stroked the bird’s feathers.
“Hello,” The bird squawks. Somehow, I understand. The bird talks.
Within the blink of an eye, the bird has changed into a human. Well, a blue-skinned one, with feathers atop her head.
I’m baffled, but we all remain silent.
Finally, she speaks again. “I’m Tyari, and I also happen to be the reserved tour guide here.”
I’ve never met a shapeshifter before, but they’re rumored to be very powerful. It’s fascinating to me, and since she’s my tour guide to this unknown land, I’ll have plenty of time to see if she’s really all that she’s been rumored to be.
“I suppose we should start the grand tour, if you all are ready?” Om, Sèco and I all nod, still in shock. Her presence is godlike. Tan skin shimmering like the sun, blue eyes carved into her face in periwinkle color. Her nose sharp and thin, lips the same, and hair so wide and flowy each strand seems to resemble a flower petal.
She shifts immediately back into a bird. It’s still as magnificent and breathtaking as before. Our train conductor takes each of our black pit hands and guides them with our bodies onto her back. As swiftly down as she came, she goes up, up, up into the clouds.
45Please respect copyright.PENANAZwLaRRm9yM
~Hello, dear reader! Sorry for breaking the fourth wall, but I had to note that I need your feedback in order to continue. If you like this story, please comment and say you do. If I get about 3 loyal readers by the third chapter, I’ll keep going updating every Wednesday. Keep an eye out for new chapters, and thanks for getting to the end.~
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