Chapter 9 · free to read
One compartment. Two bunks. Eleven hours. We had not spoken properly since the doorway.
The train did the thing trains do. It took a conversation neither of us could have in a greenhouse and made it possible in the dark.
It was not sentiment. It was an instruction, and I had been reading it as a compliment so I would not have to do anything about it.
Neither of us said what the hand was for. By the time the towers came up, we had both been awake for two hours pretending very hard to be asleep.
Artwork and narration generated with AI.