echo People call Mina many things.
A dirty thief; a liar; a swindler; an unrepentant crook; criminal scum of the highest order; and many ruder names besides. She doesn’t take it personally. She’d gladly admit that there’s a glimmer of truth in each accusation.
For instance, it is true that she spends most of her days planning schemes that most people would classify as cons or heists. It is true, to a certain extent, that she makes her living (and draws much pleasure from) divesting people of cash through not-entirely-honest means. She’s lived in this world for 24 years now and she can’t help but find an extreme excess of people seemingly waiting to have their pockets lightened. (Whoever said you can’t fool an honest man clearly wasn’t one.)
If you ask the woman herself, she’ll tell you that she views herself as a woman of the present.
Yes, she’s less than honest. She has her vices. She cheats at cards and charms ladies and gentlemen out of priceless family heirlooms (How was she supposed to know that silver locket contained a photo of a beloved, passed-on ancestor? Whoops). She’s hardly worked an honest day’s work in her life, and rarely takes the time to feel remorse for her actions.
And she fits right in with the city around her.
Venetia. City of tall spires, that feared mountain capital of the largest Empire the world has ever known. Venetia, land of tradition and good wine, whose streets always smell of coal-smoke and whose horizon is ever teeming with newly-constructed buildings grasping for the sky. Venetia, her birthplace and home. A city constantly on the move. A place of hustle and bustle, where old money rubs shoulders with rising stars. Everywhere you look you see industry, business, people scraping and scrapping with each other to chase the elusive dream of success, safety and prosperity. None of those people concern themselves with petty morals or humility. They know what they want, and they do everything in their power to get it. Mina’s not rigging the game in her favour, she’s simply playing it better than others are. Venetia is an old city, but new blood keeps it hungry.
She loves the place to death, but Gods it’s competitive.
Mina’s a fairly solitary person– in her line of work, it’s best not to be too memorable, lest you make it easier for people to report your visage to the authorities– and so she has a lot of time for self-reflection. She knows herself as she knows her city. There are things she’s good at– shuffling and dealing cards, putting on a show, shaping not just her appearance but the way she moves in order to suit a disguise– and things she’s not good at– feeling content, being patient, remaining in one place for more than a month at a time. And lately, it seems that her deficiencies have been catching up to her.
Her usual routine doesn’t produce the same pleasure it once did. The thrill of getting away with a score, the satisfaction in planning something and having it go off without a hitch– they don’t strike the same chords within her as they used to. It’s had her wondering if the world’s changing, or if she is.
It got her thinking. Despite living her life constantly on the move from one score to the next; despite remaining mobile in all aspects of her existence; despite doing everything she can to remain sufficiently stimulated… has she gotten boring? Is this life really meant for her?
She’s a solitary person these days.
She wasn’t always.
Perhaps it’s time to reckon with the people she’s left behind in pursuit of this lifestyle. Maybe it’s the right moment to stretch her legs, move out of the city for once. She wants to talk to two particular women she hasn’t seen in a while and see if they’re feeling the same thing she is.
And there was a rumour she’d heard a while back, a fanciful but alluring one, about how to call down the presence of a being from High Above. She’d be lying to herself if she said she wasn’t curious. People had talked about meetings that changed their fate, encounters with a presence that could only be divine, that set their lives on a different track after.
Maybe that’s what she needs. A consultation with a higher power; a meeting with fate. A radical change.
The Grand Empress is the future.
Well– it’s a train, in fact, but for the purposes of political propaganda and consumer advertising, it represents the future.
20,000 tonnes of worked metals and woods shaped into three dozen carriages, set to cross over five hundred kilometres of hills, fields, and valleys to link the old imperial capital city of Venetia to its once-conquered, now-cordial allies in nearby nations. Long ago, the Empire– ancient, sprawling, exhausted from decades of expansion and conquest– wouldn’t have had the inclination or the resources to undertake such a project. Technology, commerce, and good economic relations between city-states were all secondary concerns to maintaining obedience in their annexed lands. Obedience to the Empress and her righteous rule, fealty to the Crown at risk of armed suppression. There were centuries of putting down rebellions and securing the coherence of the empire at the end of a blade. Dark times, those had been. Bloody times.
But people do not live in those times any longer.
Now, they have a constitution, and a body of elected representatives of the Empire to run in the stead of the Empress. No longer are bonds between states negotiated on the battlefield. Now they’re secured at the polls, in the chambers of parliament, strengthened by the trade freely flowing across borders no longer prickling with the threat of war. The modern Empire is an administration focused on peace through commerce, avoiding the nasty bloodbaths of times past by working to build a more prosperous future for every citizen. It’s an old behemoth shedding the skin of its past sins and looking toward the bright future– a more connected and enlightened future, where everyone in Imperial lands feels safe and motivated.
And thus, the Grand Empress. Named after Her Holiness The Empress– because monarchy still commands respect, even in civilised times– it’s the first railway linking the seat of Imperial power to a number of its most prosperous cities. It has a maximum capacity of 1400 people, and will carry luggage and cargo swiftly across borders like nothing before seen in this corner of the world.
On the day of its inaugural journey, the grand station around it is packed. Cityfolk and nobility crowd the platform, chattering and jostling each other like only large crowds can. Banners and pennants emblazoned with the coat-of-arms of Venetia and the Empire flap in the morning breeze above the sea of heads. Hawkers roam the throng selling snacks, their piercing voices only adding to the general level of noise. The sky is cloudless above and the sun is bright but not overly warm. The Grand Empress herself is a stunning visage of burnished bronzes and sleek dark shapes. It looks like the future, sure enough.
Mina thinks it’ll make a fine stage for her little reunion.
It’s been two weeks since she resolved to embark on this endeavour. She’s called in a lot of favours to secure three tickets, and did a lot of digging into that rumour about the seance with the mysterious, fate-bending entity.
She has with her today a knapsack full of items that may or may not be of magical use, a purse with a lot of cash, two separate sets of false identification papers (just in case), and a gut full of hope.
Hope has always been a useful part of her toolset, but today she can’t count on having the odds rigged in her favour. She’d tracked down the addresses of her former friends and sent them their tickets discreetly, at no small expense. She didn’t give any indication of who sent the tickets or why. If they both decide that the new, flashy, state-of-the-art transportation system is of no interest to them, then they won’t show, and the past two weeks of preparation will have been for nothing.
The prospect doesn’t bother Mina. She’ll be heading out of the city either way. She’ll attempt the seance by herself if she has to. It had felt wrong, even to her skewed morals, to fabricate an elaborate story to trick them into coming here. (And the idea of leading with the truth, after how they had painfully parted four years ago, had been unthinkable too.)
So here she is, being led past the ticket office by a gaggle of uniformed stewards, lugging her suitcase and knapsack up the steps and into the cool conditioned air of the Empress with no idea if her old friends will show. The lack of confirmation is almost thrilling.
She lets herself be led through the carriages till she arrives at car no.24. It’s an upper-class car, with three whole rooms for her use within. To the left of the central corridor is the sleeping space and toilet, to the right a sitting room with large windows offering a wide view of whatever environment they’ll be passing through. The decor is very cosy. A little stiff for her tastes, perhaps, but all in all a fine place to have a good chat with some old friends.
She settles into a plush armchair, sets down her belongings, and waits.
Isabel doesn’t want to be here, per se, but she can’t really think of anywhere she’d rather be instead.
The ticket that had arrived for her in the mail, dropped off by a house servant on his daily rounds, had seemed at first nothing out of the ordinary. It promised a seat on board that brand-new steam engine, the grand project linking her kingdom to its neighbours, a momentous feat of engineering and goodwill between city-states formerly hostile to each other. It was a shining beacon to the world, the Empire putting its best foot forward as a body that connects nations instead of despoiling them.
Her mind had fed her this info as she turned the ticket over in her hands, appreciating the texture of the cream-coloured card, the gold foil at the edges. A premium-feeling ticket for a premium-feeling mode of transport. The exact type of thing one might send the daughter of an Empress. Even in times where the mantle of Empire no longer holds the same prestige it used to.
But over the course of the two days leading up to the train’s grand opening, she’d asked around and found that the ticket was not, in fact, an official invitation from Parliament or from the organisation responsible for the train’s construction and operation. None of her aides was responsible for purchasing it– they’d had to have drawn from her funds, and a withdrawal of that cost would have been notified to her– and she certainly hadn’t done it herself. Her mother, the Grand Empress for which the vehicle was named, had not received a ticket.
Her name on the ticket, written out by hand in solid black ink, did not seem like it could have been a mistake.
She had considered tossing the thing away, deeming it suspicious and a sign of a conspiracy against the Crown. She could have raised a fuss, rang the alarm bells. But that would have been childish, and only slightly less interesting than her life usually was. Anyway, she didn’t exist in a world where assassins waited for her in train cars.
After some long consideration, she’d decided that the most interesting course of action was to board the train. Worst case scenario, the ticket was a mistake, or a prank, and she’d make the walk back to the palace in 15 minutes or so. If something interesting happened, it could only serve to brighten her life.
So here she is, smiling graciously at a stewardess as she takes her bags from her and points the way to car no.24. The ticket had been genuine, and her car awaits. It’s a high-class one, the stewardess informs her as they pass through carriages towards it. It’s got beds– Beds plural, she notes. Interesting– and a sitting room for meals and games and so on. All the furniture is comfortable, not like the cramped seating in the regular cars. It’ll be like staying in a hotel, except for the rumble of the train and the scenery rushing by outside. It sounds like a very novel experience indeed.
They arrive and Isabel collects her luggage from the stewardess. She watches her depart, weaving past the crowd of shuffling passengers all boarding the train behind her. She stands for a moment in the space between cars no.23 and 24, looking back through the open door of the carriage she passed through. To either side, she can see a slice of Venetia, old buildings and clear morning sky sandwiched between the two train cars.
She steps forward, setting her cases down onto car no.24, and slides open the door.
Just then, there’s a scuffling sound from behind her. Someone stumbles into her and Isabel trips forward with a yelp.
A strong arm wraps around her waist and steadies her. The culprit begins to ask for her forgiveness. She brushes off the arm and turns to see her, preparing her own speech–
And freezes.
Isabel stands there speechless as her eyes meet those of someone she thought she’d never see again. Shocked ice-blue eyes stare at her from under thin grey brows. The woman’s name spills unbidden from her lips.
“Nara?”
Nara doesn’t want to be here, but no one ever asks her opinion on anything.
She’d found the ticket two days ago, neatly slipped under her apartment door inside of a letter. She wasn’t the kind of person who got mysterious unaddressed letters, and so was tempted at first to throw the thing out. But curiosity got the better of her, and so here she was.
Life as a dockworker wasn’t exactly exhilarating, and she figured that her boss wouldn’t dearly miss her presence for one single afternoon while she went and got the mistake cleared up. Investigating this rare occurrence was easily more interesting than unloading crates from ships the whole afternoon.
So she’d put on her boots and jacket and left for the train station.
The sheer size and enthusiasm of the crowd had shocked her, and she recalled the high-class feel of the ticket that clearly wasn’t hers. How many people were here for this thing? She’d vaguely heard about it in passing, in the way one hears about the development of revolutionary new technologies that’ll likely have no impact on your life. She’d had no interest in the Grand Empress before today.
Weaving her way through the crowd of reporters, passengers and interested passer-bys, she was forced to concede that the steam engine did look mighty impressive. It gleamed in the sun, a vision of the bright future.
Nara had tried in vain to explain to the operator at the ticket booth that the Empress clearly represented a future that was unsuited to the likes of her, but had been roundly ignored as soon as they saw the ticket she was waving in their faces. She was ushered onto the train by a pack of wide-smiling, clearly overworked stewards through the gates. They read her ticket– ignoring her exasperated explanations that there had been a mistake and it wasn’t rightly hers– and bundled her through a dozen carriages until they arrived at carriage no.23.
She simply sighs as the steward gestures to the open door connecting carriages 23 and 24. There’s a woman in a flowing blue dress standing just outside the door. As Nara opens her mouth to thank the stewards, the one who’d grabbed her bag on the way in shoves it back into her arms and tips his cap.
Air knocked out of her, she stumbles backwards and drops the bag. It falls to the carpeted floor with a scuffle as the stewards hustle back the way they came. Her back hits the blue-dressed woman’s and she hears a yelp.
Acting on instinct, she whirls around and stops her fall, wrapping an arm around her and setting her on her feet.
“Sorry,” she says. “The damn bagboy hit me–”
“Oh, nevermind, I should have–”
Both of them freeze simultaneously. A cold shock goes through Nara as the woman turns and meets her eyes. She knows this person. Will always know her.
Her heart clenches as her name falls from the princess’s lips.
“Nara?”
Then another vision from the past pipes in, voice as jovial and irritating as ever.
“Ah, you guys showed up after all! Great!” Mina pokes her head through the open door of carriage no.24 and beckons them in with a hand. “Come on in!”
This isn’t awkward, Mina tells herself. It isn’t.
Another favoured tool in her arsenal, aside from hope, is confidence. It’s the con part of conwoman, after all. It’s gotten her through many an uncomfortable situation.
But nothing in her life has felt quite like this moment:
Two old friends she hasn’t contacted in years, sitting in plush chairs and staring at her like she’s pulled some cruel magician’s trick on them. The three of them together again in one of the world’s most coveted train cars, wide-eyed and speechless after Mina ushered the two of them in and set their bags down.
She decides to break the silence, because if she doesn’t it’s going to choke the life from her.
“Alright!” She claps her hands together and gives Nara and Isabel a winning smile. “Any questions?”
A beat of baffled silence passes.
“Yes.” Nara mutters just as Isabel huffs in laughter.
“Okay,” she holds up a hand for silence and says, “Before you ask– I got them legally.” She slips her ticket out of her jacket pocket and tosses it onto the low wooden table between their seats.
Isabel hums, amusement evident in the sound. “Actually legally, or ‘it technically doesn’t count as a crime but a jury will still look at you sideways’ legally?”
Mina laughs. “Legally-legally! Cross my heart!”
“Tch.” Nara turned and stared out the window in distaste. “As if we haven’t heard that sort of promise before.”
Now it’s Isabel’s turn to laugh. Mina sinks back into her armchair and sighs. One thread of the complicated ball of tension surrounding them comes undone, and she feels like she can breathe again. “Believe me or don’t,” she tells them with a shrug, “We’re here, and I’m pretty sure it’s too late to back out now.”
Nara frowns. “What do you mean by that?”
As if on cue, the shrill whistle announcing the Grand Empress’s departure from the station sounds. A round of applause and cheering rises up outside, and a low rumbling starts up beneath their feet as the train’s wheels start turning. The scenery of the city seen through the wide window of the carriage starts sliding rightwards. The rumble builds in volume as the train works its way to full speed. For a moment, the three of them are in silent awe of the engineering prowess it must have taken to create this thing, this huge mobile beast of steel and wood.
The view of Venetia’s high buildings and smoky streets gives way to the hilly shrublands West of the city. Green hills rush by at a speed faster than any horse could maintain and the rumble of wheels on the tracks fades into background noise. The six-hour journey to the first stop along the railway begins.
“Well, that was pretty impressive, huh?” Isabel says with a grin, bringing Nara and Mina back down to earth.
Mina nods and whistles in agreement. Nara crosses her arms and tries not to look at Isabel too closely as she nods. It’s then that Mina fully recalls the extent of the past relationship between the two. The three of them splitting up had mostly been a mutual thing, but she knew the fallout could not have been healthy for their romance. A rush of sympathy rises in her gut and she attempts to move the conversation forward as fast as possible.
She clears her throat and starts speaking. “Okay, I’m going to lay everything out on the table for you both, alright? Full transparency.” She leans back in her seat and gestures to the lavish carriage around them. “I’m here to get away from the city. I called you two here because I had a feeling that you might want to, too.”
“A feeling?” Nara frowns. “You sent us unmarked letters with no explanation after total silence for four years off of a feeling?”
Isabel raises her brows and looks at Mina expectantly, as if saying, I’m with her here. Explain yourself. Mina takes a deep breath and studies her former friends for a moment.
Isabel, heir to an empire, who she met while scamming socialites at the afterparty to a famous opera performance. Instead of ratting her out to the authorities, she’d gleefully joined in the fun. Mina had found in her an unlikely kindred spirit. As it turned out, the political skills of royalty were plenty helpful in cheating people out of their money. Isabel had inherited the austere beauty of her father and her mother’s ironclad confidence. She had the raven-dark hair and striking green eyes of her family line and a sense of infectious humour that was all her own. She was a joy to be around, and they had gotten into and out of heaps of trouble before parting ways dramatically four years ago.
Four years have done little to dull her appeal in Mina’s eyes. She looks older now, more mature. She’s clearly fallen neatly into the political role demanded of her position in her family. Her smile is less toothy, her features more defined. The blue dress she’s wearing suits her beautifully, and Mina is briefly jealous of her for having an on-demand tailor.
Then she turns her attention to Nara. Former soldier, current woman-about-town. Perpetually irritated with the world, and for good reason. Mina had grown up untouched by the war that was fought in her childhood, but Nara was older than the two of them and wasn’t spared. She’d been turned into a weapon by the empire Isabel was heir to, and been discarded as soon as she was no longer needed. When Mina met her, she recognised immediately the pain she carried around with her, the trauma of having one’s life stolen and turned to violent ends. She had felt for the woman.
They’d first met at a bar one night after Isabel and her were fleeing from incensed city policemen. Nara hadn’t known why they were running– they’d committed a crime– or whether the police had good reason to be chasing after them– refer to the previous interjection– but had rolled up her sleeves and come to their defense. She became a steadfast ally to Mina, and something a little more intimate to Isabel.
She looks more or less as she did all those years ago. Plain clothes, sturdy boots. Constant frown, as if she woke up on the wrong side of the bed every day of her life. Short hair prematurely grey from the stresses of fighting a war as a teenager. The only thing that’s not purely functional are the leather gloves she wears to hide the scars on her hands. Mina’s never asked, and Nara’s never told the story.
Not much has changed on the exterior for the two of them, but that’s a condemnation in and of itself, isn’t it? Four years have come and gone and the three of them are still the same.
Instead of responding to Nara’s query, she gestures at the arrangement of magical odds and ends laid out on the low table before them. There are lit candles and objects of supposed power arranged atop a sketched circle of chalk on a wide sheet of parchment. She’d set it up in the half hour before Isabel and Nara had arrived.
Mina has no clue what each of the components does or how they contribute to the workings of the magic the circle allegedly summons, but some very serious-looking witches and wizards had spent days preparing the list of ingredients and the formation of the ritual circle. It’s entirely likely that they could’ve just been wasting Mina’s time and money, but she hadn’t picked up any indication of deception with her conwoman senses, so she figures the magic is probably sound.
“I dunno about you two, but I’ve been feeling out of touch lately.” she says, rising from her seat and moving towards the ritual circle. “With myself. With the life I’m living. I’m not doing anything differently, but nothing feels right, you know?
“I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but I missed those months we spent together. It felt like we had… I dunno, a purpose? A direction? Some sense of connection that I don’t even have with myself anymore.” She sits crosslegged on the carpet next to the table, staring at the candle flames and mentally running through the last few instructions for the spell.
“And maybe I’m a fool, for not reaching out like a normal person. Everything has to be a scheme with me. I’m an overthinker, an idiot who’s not suited to the life she lives. I missed you guys.” She pauses and meets Isabel and Nara’s gazes before bowing her head. “I couldn’t figure out how to admit it to myself.”
She opens a vial of red powder, grabs a pinch of it and sprinkles it onto three of the seven candles that sat on the chalk circle. The candle flames sputter, then flare up with renewed strength. “And along the way, I heard a rumour. An appealing one to me. People were saying there was a way for dopes like us to get in contact with someone Up There. A higher power, someone who’d have it all figured out. Someone who could point me– us, in the right direction.”
A bead of sweat rolls from her forehead down her cheek as she works, uncapping another vial and recolouring another two candle flames. “Sure, it might be a shortcut. It might be nonsense and not work at all, but…” She meets her friends’ entranced gazes. “I figure it’s worth a shot.”
The last bit of powder falls from her fingers and lands on the last candle. The flame sputters…
And dies. Along with the rest of the candles.
Mina huffs a sigh, tensed shoulder relaxing. She gets ready to laugh the whole endeavour off as a failure, when she realises that the candle flames weren’t the only things that went away.
The everpresent rumble of the train has disappeared. The subliminal rattling of the wheels on the tracks, the low hum of the engine at work. All sounds of the world gone.
Swallowing heavily, she looks to her friends.
Empty chairs. Silence.
There is a sound, sharp and sudden like shattering glass, and Mina falls into herself.
It’s difficult to describe what happens to her sense of space and time.
Her senses short-circuit and the physical world around her falls away. She is not enveloped by darkness so much as cut off from processing her surroundings. The world drains away, retreating from her grasp. She can hear the sound of her heartbeat, thumping wildly from some place distant. Her breath is quick, uncontrolled, panic rising in her veins as she tries to center herself to no avail.
“What did you think was going to happen?” A familiar voice breaks the supernatural silence.
Mina chokes on air, coughs, tries to look around and fails. She doesn’t have control of her body.
“You are not in danger,” says the voice. Something itches at the back of her mind. She knows this voice, though its character– low, sensuous, softly amused– is like nothing she’s ever heard from another human being. But she knows it, has known it for a long time.
“Oh yes. You do know me. Who I am is not important at the moment though. Who you are– that’s the question.”
The rapid beating of her heart slows somewhat, her senses adjusting to the unreality of the situation. Her mind still runs at high speed, though, furiously trying to decipher where it is she’s heard this voice before.
“And before you ask, yes. Your comrades are getting the same treatment. Though in a less… disorienting fashion.” The voice’s tone turns playful. “You know me the best, after all. I thought you’d appreciate a private chat.”
Mina calls on all her remaining supplies of confidence, grasps the rattled edges of her sanity, and holds on tight.
Isabel remembers lessons.
Constant lessons, daily lessons, strict lessons. Lessons that make up her childhood. Lessons that teach her about the world her mother rules, and the world she’s going to inherit.
Days spent in too-large rooms with solemn-faced tutors, looking out the windows and yearning to be outside the suffocating walls of her family’s palace. Shouted commands, scoldings from her mother, a grey blur of years spent shaping her into an outdated idea of what a ruler should be.
She learns languages from famous writers, etiquette from aged aristocrats of impossible poise. She learns of history, politics, economics, and the laws of her mother’s empire. She does not make a single friend in the big, lonely home she was born into, but she feels their absence nonetheless.
She remembers the dull boredom of her early life, and the cold shock of entering reality after her thirteenth birthday.
She remembers discovering that all the lessons in the world couldn’t prepare her for the true state of Venetia. A war had been fought while she was growing up, and the world had changed– was changing, is changing, always will be changing. Her mother couldn’t seem to grasp that. Parliament, industry, free trade and commerce. The energy of the world was shifting, the wheels of history spinning faster than monarchy could comprehend.
It had been difficult, learning to accept that the world she was raised to thrive in no longer existed.
She’s grown now. There are no more lessons to be had. The future is here, and she has no place in it currently. She spends her days bored, politely smiling at perfunctory events, less interesting to the average Venetian than an opera singer or stage actor.
Is this the life she wants? Is this only life meant for her?
Far away, she can hear her heart beating.
A voice chimes in, seeming to speak right into her ear.
“Time to decide who you are.”
Nara remembers war.
She remembers getting pulled into it as a teenager, after it burnt through her village and left her life as a farmer’s daughter in ashes.
She recalls calloused hands strapping her into equipment too heavy for her. She recalls shouted orders, yells from ally and enemy alike distorted through the thick metal of her helmet. War was a hellish wash of deafening sound and oppressive sensation. It was disorientation and blind fear, choking smoke and hunched figures glimpsed in the light of fires searing through homes.
She recalls long periods of terrible, hopeless waiting shattered by moments of incredible violence. She recalls comrades dead and broken. She recalls losing her faith in both the Gods above and the nation whose soil she bloodies beneath her too-large boots. The world made no sense, time fragmented into splintered moments of death and pain.
She recalls killing her first man, feeling the hot shock of blood on her hands as she pushed her blade in, recalls the trembling in her soul as she watched the light leave his eyes.
She sees herself, a killer through the years, hands stained by blood that wouldn’t wash off no matter how many times she scrubbed them raw.
She sees herself, discharged after the conclusion of the war. Left with nothing but the clothes on her back and the sword she hated, cut loose from the service that stole years of her life and the colour from her hair. She sees herself falling into whatever odd job came her way, drifting aimlessly from job to job. Doing hard labour that tired her body so that her mind lost the energy to eat itself.
She’s spent nearly her whole adult life with no direction. Aside from those bright, raucous months with the thief and the princess, her life has carried her along without her input. She’s a sailor on a ship with no oars.
A voice murmurs in her ear.
“Don’t you think it’s time you chose your own direction in life?”
Mina comes to herself slowly, settling back into her physical body like a sailor checking their ship’s equipment after a bad storm, gingerly testing each piece of equipment to ensure it’s still in working condition. Her eyes open. She can swallow, can unclench her fingers from their clenched positions in her lap. Her body is the same as it was, even after the journey her mind just went through.
The familiar presence had taken her on a whirlwind tour of her own life, flashing through its events like a rushed stageplay. A forced eternity of self-reflection, condensed down into the space of… she has no clue how long it’s been. There’s no clock in carriage no.24. She blinks, turns her stiff neck and peers out the wide windows.
The early evening sky is a ruddy orange, the yolk-yellow sun peeking through strips of cloud, shining down upon fields of tall grass. These are the lands between nations, undeveloped and empty. Near the outskirts of Venetia’s closest neighbour, Barkhest, as likely as not.
Someone clears their throat and Mina jumps, attention whipping towards the sound of the voice.
Isabel and Nara stare at her wide-eyed, back in their seats, hands clutched together in the space between their plush armchairs. Nara has tears in her eyes and Isabel’s are red rimmed. Mina realises with a jolt that her shirt is stained with tears.
Isabel clears her throat again and says, in a raw voice, “Well.”
Mina nods silently. Yeah. There isn’t much else one can say to what they just experienced.
She stumbles to her feet and returns to her armchair. The ritual circle is destroyed, candles melted down to stubs, the miscellaneous components scattered between them twisted and broken. The sheet of parchment beneath it all looks cracked and brittle.
They spend a long moment in commiserating silence, listening to the rumble of the train below their feet.
Eventually, she apologises. “Sorry.” Her voice comes out as a rasp. “I should’ve asked more about the procedure. I shouldn’t have put you guys through all that without checking. If you wanna get off at Barkhest, I won’t stop you. Gods.”
Nara puts up a hand and she snaps her mouth shut.
“It’s alright.” she says, then frowns. “Well, not really. But–”
“It was helpful.” Isabel offers, glancing at Nara. The retired soldier nods, and Mina sees some tension leave her as their eyes meet.
“Personally,” Isabel continues, “I can vouch for having the feeling you were talking about. The I-have-no-clue-what-I’m-doing-with-my-life one. You’re not wrong. I think I do need a change.”
Nara sniffs. “Me too.”
Mina allows her limbs to loosen and slumps into the plush depths of her chair. “Great.”
She treasures the small smile Isabel offers her as she speaks again. “I don’t know yet what that change will be, but…” she glances at Nara. “I wouldn’t mind figuring it out with the two of you.”
Mina nods. Words would fail to express her emotions right now.
They fall silent again. They sit quietly and watch through the window as the first buildings of Barkhest slide into view outside. Unfamiliar, yet promising. Someplace different, someplace new.
Their future, for them to tackle the way they see fit.
Somewhere far above, someone laughs to herself, satisfied.
Written by: Ryan Kong
Edited by: Zhen Li
