Six hundred kilometers feel like an eternity when you’re waiting for the unexpected. An eternity made of golden fields and pine forests and mountains that look blue in the distance. An eternity made of things you’ve never seen, air you’ve never tasted, and a train that rocks and clatters like guilt.
I wonder if this is how it feels to be immortal. You’re moving, but not really. You’re existing, but time seems thin, flowing like a current through your fingers.
I try to close my eyes and rest, but I’m too tempted to watch the world pass by my window. A world that seems endless and sprawling. A world that makes me feel small and insignificant in the face of its wildness. And then that sense of distance tightens my chest as if my bones can feel these six hundred kilometers—I’m leaving the only home I’ve ever known—and I withdraw his letters from my bag, and I reread them. Sometimes I regret leaving his last letter on the floor. Sometimes I’m relieved that I did, because I don’t think I’d be sitting here, pressing westward with nothing more than my courage, into a cloud of dust if I hadn’t.
Sometimes I wonder what he looks like and if I’ll ever write to him again.
Sometimes I—
The train lurched.
Iris stopped writing, glancing out the window. She watched as the train rumbled slower and slower, eventually coming to a complete, smoke-hissing stop. They were in the middle of a field in Central Borough. No towns or buildings were in sight.
Had they broken down?
She set her notepad aside, rising to peek out of the compartment. Most of the passengers had already disembarked at the previous stops. But farther down the corridor, Iris caught sight of another girl, speaking to one of the staff.
“We’ll pick up speed once the sun sets, miss,” the crew member said. “In about half an hour or so. Please, help yourself to a cup of tea in the meantime.”
Iris ducked back into her compartment. They had purposefully stopped, and she wondered why they had to wait for darkness to continue. She was thinking about gathering her bags and seeking out the girl she had seen when a tap sounded on the sliding door.
“Is this seat taken?”
Iris glanced up, surprised to see the girl. She had brown skin and curly black hair, and she held a typewriter case in one hand, a cup of tea in the other. She was wearing the same drab jumpsuit as Iris, with the white INKRIDDEN TRIBUNE PRESS badge over her heart, but she somehow made the garb look far more fashionable, with a belt cinched at her waist and the pants cuffed at her ankles, exposing red striped socks and dark boots. A pair of binoculars hung from her neck and a leather bag was slung over her shoulder.
Another war correspondent.
“No,” Iris said with a smile. “It’s yours if you want it.”
The girl stepped into the compartment, nudging the door closed behind her. She set down her typewriter, then dropped her leather bag with a groan, taking the seat directly across from Iris’s. She closed her eyes and took a sip of the tea, only to promptly cough, her nose crinkling.
“Tastes like burnt rubber,” she said, and proceeded to open the window, dumping out the tea.
“Do you know why we’ve stopped?” Iris asked.
Her newfound companion shut the window, her attention drifting back to Iris. “I’m not exactly sure. The crew seemed hesitant to say anything, but I think it has to do with bombs.”
“Bombs?”
“Mm. I think we’ve reached the boundary for Western Borough, and beyond it is an active zone, where the effects of the war can be felt. I don’t know why, but they made it sound like it’s safer for the train to travel by night from here on out.” The girl crossed her legs at the ankles, studying Iris with an attentive eye. “I didn’t realize I’d have a companion on this trip.”
“I think I arrived at Inkridden Tribune right after you left,” Iris said, still thinking about bombs.
“Helena ask you a hundred questions?”
“Yes. Thought she wasn’t going to hire me.”
“Oh, she’d have hired you,” the girl said. “Even if you had arrived looking like you’d just danced at a club. Rumor has it they’re desperate for correspondents. I’m Thea Attwood, by the way. But everyone calls me Attie.”
“Iris Winnow. But most people call me by my last name.”
“Then I’ll call you by your first,” said Attie. “So, Iris. Why are you doing this?”
Iris grimaced. She wasn’t sure how much she wanted to reveal about her tragic past yet, so she settled for a simple “There’s nothing for me in Oath. I needed a change. You?”
“Well, someone I once respected told me that I didn’t have it in me to become published. My writing ‘lacked originality and conviction,’ he said.” Attie snorted, as if those words still stung. “So I thought, what better way to prove myself? What could be a better teacher than having the constant threat of death, dismemberment, and whatever else Inkridden Tribune said in that waiver of theirs to sharpen your words? Regardless, I don’t like attempting things that I think I’ll fail at, so I have no choice but to write superb pieces and live to see them published, to my old professor’s chagrin. In fact, I paid for him have a subscription, so the Inkridden Tribune will start showing up on his doorstep, and he’ll see my name in print and eat his words.”
“A fitting penance,” Iris said, amused. “But I hope you realize that you didn’t have to sign up to write about war to prove yourself to anyone, Attie.”
“I do, but where’s the sense of adventure in that? Living the same careful and monotonous routine, day in and day out?” Attie smiled, dimples flirting in her cheeks. The next words she said Iris felt in her chest, resounding like a second heartbeat. Words that were destined to bind them together as friends. “I don’t want to wake up when I’m seventy-four only to realize I haven’t lived.”
