Allison didn’t like this place. The tiles were strewn roughly beneath her feet, almost parallel with each other but not quite. She didn’t like the sand that had settled lightly on her from head to toe, the grit and grime of train exhaust, the blaring of horns and screeching of wheels as the trains pulled into the station.
She pressed through the station hurriedly, a hand pulling her along. She followed the quick-stepping feet ahead of her but never once looking up at the body attached to them. She stumbled, stubbing her toe on a bench as she recovered. She didn’t like this place.
Somewhere above her, an announcement blared: “Train 125 to Amsterdam has arrived on track seven.” Allison frowned. 125 should have arrived on track five–that would have been cleaner, neater. Divisor with dividend, no remainders. She had no time to keep pondering the dissonance, however, as she was dragged around a corner onto a smaller platform. At last she looked up.
A large sign above her announced that she had been led to track twelve, that it was 2:31, and that the next train was arriving in ten minutes. She made her way to a bench and sat down, once again analyzing the tiled ground beneath her. Her foot traced the even, well-aligned hexagonal grid below her. Maybe this orderliness was a good sign.
Her mother sat down beside her carefully, as if afraid of knocking her over. Allison leaned into her mother’s side, soaking in the comfort of the familiar shape beside her. London had been a place of chaos, noise, and bustle, so different from the quiet she usually surrounded herself with. She pressed herself further into her mother’s side and wishfully summoned the train that was to take her back to the countryside.
The sign by the track taunted her with six more minutes of waiting. She watched the tapping of her mother’s fingers against her small, glowing screen until the screech of wheels greeted her, and then she was being pulled onto the fume-cloaked speedy box of death to be swiftly carried home. As she stumbled into the carriage of the railcar, she leaned into her mother once more and waited for the train to rumble to life.