New SS: Starlight Express CLOSED Indefinitely - Page 28

Whatever he thought he should made it clear to her first.. Should have shared his thoughts with her... Then probably she wouldn't have a heartbreak

Hey Congratz on this new SS and can't wait to start reading!!!

I'm back from Starlight. It's not bad a route coming from Seattle. But just realized that the best scenic routes were lost in the murky lights of the night. So don't be surprised if I disappear another weekend on the train. Will upload pics of Seattle later in the day and post the link here - for those who are interested.

Nice update 😊 Waiting for more

The slightest amorous emotion, whether of happiness

or of disappointment, brings Werther to tears.

Werther weeps often, very often, and in floods. Is it the

lover in Werther who weeps, or is it the romantic?

She closed the book down, feeling a fever rage in her forehead. It wasn't like her to contemplate that sentence for she'd been sure it was the lover in her that had cried all those days. But suddenly she wanted to consider if it was merely the romantic that'd shed tears over not being Abhinav's amorous object anymore. Funny...she thought, books were meant to bring in perspective that she didn't bear earlier, cause a paradigm shift; although, she was now facing another unwarranted inquiry.

If anything the book was meant to wipe the demon of love out of her head, serve as a guide book on how to fall out of love with its deconstruction condensed in the pages. Instead, she found herself learning ways to identify with romantic love, tracing her ways into the delusion of maddening love...falling in love with love. In that one precarious moment, she'd thought she was content, simply to rely on the print words of the book to take her through the rest of the life.

Somehow in real life, love was a perverse experiment of the sorts - which the book too affirmed - that handed a soft truffle at first...melting and dousing one with an illusionary enchantment, so bewitching that it almost always obscured the upcoming zap that was guaranteed to follow once the phase of thrilling attraction was over. The jolting zap, was what was left besides the emptiness that remained. And this, some called love - a rather dignified name for the motions one went through to keep up with the circle of life.

In the last one month, she'd learnt that all those years with Abhinav she'd been preparing herself to arrive at this precise instant to feel what she was feeling, comprehend with depth what she'd known all along. Only she could contemplate on theory from a book as being her own life experience. But she had done that same thing ever since her childhood. This time, she couldn't help draw parallels to the experiments she'd synthesized at the lab that'd earned her a degree.

Like she'd worked her way through chemistry experiments, her parents' aim had been to find her a soul mate; hers being a lover. Though it was a simple sounding objective, it was one experiment that didn't have a predetermined procedure written in stone to obtain the desired end results. She tried her best to keep herself detached from the intent behind their meetings, wanting to deal with him just as another male prospect she'd met on a chance encounter.

Keeping with the experimental standards - of when a man and woman were involved - she dated him, went out with his friends and indulged him by holding his arm at boring parties. Then came the time for a stimulant in the process to pair them up; enter sex as a catalyst to intensify their combination; combustible and explosive; a luminescence followed by smoke and the fireworks.

What she then came to realize was that, the starting reactants of every such test were always the same: a man and a woman. It's the third and fourth unaccounted for, unseen elements that determined the end-product: the couples' individualities that interfere with the process, in trying to thrust ones wants and desires onto the other, wanting to make them malleable to each other's needs. Despite being aware of their conflicting natures, she could only hope the reactant products remained as anticipated: a happily ever after. But as always, they changed - they gave up on each other; once the fizz died out, ashes remained mixed with salt.

This wasn't just true of her life alone for this was every couple's irrefutable state of being. If one is lucky, the by-products that remain towards the end stay inert in the ways salt is to the air around - an unusable, unpalatable substance that is sustainable but not enjoyable or fulfilling. Else the relationship fizzles out and go separate ways, just as soon as they were shaken together in the love experiment. Very rarely does something sweet and deeply satiating product is concocted with the coming together of two people. And she was assured now that such denouement wasn't meant for Abhinav and her.

She was no longer certain how or when it had happened, but she was on a long stretch of a platform, waiting for the train to come by. She moved forward to the edge, hearing a horn that wafted her way, announcing the train on the tracks that would emerge any minute now from the curving path which disappeared past an aging willow. Once she sighted the train, with its steady chug from the engine making her wary to step back a bit, she felt a relief flow through her, glad to be able to make it back on the train, she must have mistakenly gotten off. However, as the train neared the station, she noticed that the train was slightly larger than the ones she'd travelled in. When the train was hardly a few feet away, she ran backwards fearing the monstrous size of the train arriving at full speed. She was almost certain, that the train was meant to make a stop there, but instead it sped untowardly, leaving her stranded there at the deserted station.

Other trains came which were far too smaller and narrower for her to step inside. It was all together menacing when no one got off the train, for there were none boarded in the coaches, leaving the empty cars filled with an eerie silence. The only train that resembled the trains she'd been familiar with, stood patiently waiting on the other track, ready to leave in the direction opposite to which she intended to take. A strange worry multiplied inside her, urging her to decide if she was ready to go back to where it had all begun. Before long, her eyes begin to fill with the tears that hadn't spilled all of last month and she felt lost, swiveling on her feet to find anybody who can get her past the marooning situation.

...a loud screech that was closely accompanied by a fitful jerk threw her back onto the seat cushion, waking her up in the lounge car. Her eyes were bleary, still laden with the last vestige of sleep that'd brought about those agonizing dreams. Squinting her eyes, she strained to read the station they'd halted at. The board read Portland and she turned her attention to check for her purse that she'd carelessly left on the tray table in front of her. Her eyes narrowed once again when she saw a coffee cup with a yellow sticky close to her wallet. She distinctly remembered coming to sit there, after discarding the coffee cup she'd carried wandering about the coach cars.

Taking the note in her hand, she was certain it was his writing, though she'd no way of recognizing it had it not been for the message on it.

It read, "You were sleeping...I hope you get to this while it's still hot"

A faint chill came to live under her skin, when she recalled how close the sentence came to abridging her dreams.