Boarding The Train

All Aboard!

It's very silly of me to stand here like this, one foot just inside the train and one foot on the station platform. I know this, but still, I hesitate. Until the conductor comes and tells me to hurry up and decide if I want to come aboard, because the train is about to start moving. I take a deep steadying breath and step up. This is the first time I have ever left White Haven.

My father has arranged for me to visit a business partner of his in Gearford, to shadow him for a few weeks. I am rather nervous. I've heard stories about the Technocrats and their impudence. I was too small to really remember much of the Revolution. I remember the scrambling as my parents gathered us all up and took us to White Haven. My father was loyal to the King, and once the Technocrats were in power, we were no longer safe in the city. My father still calls it Opitlocus sometimes, when he forgets.

Today is my seventeenth birthday, and I am old enough that I am going on my own to make my way in the world. As an assistant, true, so nit fully, but it is still exciting. The train starts to move, and I am on my way, into the unknown.