So last night the four of us were supposed to meet up. Emma and Ruth and Jane and me. Jane and Emma connected first. Maybe in Gburg, maybe Atown. Somewhere. And I guess they decided they’d missed Ruth and me, so set out to find us.
Enter Ruth and me. We met -- again someplace that made sense at the time but picturing it now, there's nothing I recognize.
"Where are they? I know they didn't drive all the way to Ethan's house looking for Ruth. Dude lives in Boston!" And by Boston, I meant New England somewhere. And New England included the whole northeastern seaboard area up to Ontario.
But we knew that, just knew, that was indeedy where they'd gone. Ruth and I also somehow knew Jane and Emma had set out a few hours ago. But it was okay because we could catch up to them because they were only driving.
And Ruth has a special ability to travel anywhere in a blink.
And I could tag along if I held on tightly enough.
There was only one downside: Ruth's great ability only works if she starts from Hville. Specifically from the huge central rail station in Hville.
So Ruth and I drove to Hville, which wasn't that far so we must have been in Atown, at least by then. It was getting late -- or at least after supper -- by then, dark and overcast. The lights of the parking lot and all around the station lit up the low clouds, turning the stratus silver against the pitchy night skies above.
I don't know if you're familiar with the Hville station. The big one. It's one of those big fancy sprawling stonework buildings. Lots of arched openings lead into waiting rooms and snack bars and more waiting rooms and entrances to the platforms and exhibit halls. It feels like it’s lit by torches in wall sconces, but it isn’t really. It just has some soft amber sort of lighting high high up.
You step in, well, at first it's just all modern metal and bullet-proof glass ticket vending and wall maps and flatscreens of scrolling ads on walls that you'll remember later as light gray concrete but are really a darker smoke super durable plaster-esque substance that never molds. But once you get into the station proper, it's like stepping into a medieval European fortress -- or at least the general American idea of medieval Europe. Maybe it's really more like entering the castle or keep at a really nice long-running permanent-site Renaissance festival, which is really what most of us dumb Americans (I have a Masters, beeteedubs) think Europe looks like.
Which was perfect for the special exhibit of medieval something-or-other we found passing through one the side arches. It was staffed by men full-on dressed like grand inquisitors. Well, probably men. That garb was pretty all-encompassing and really just about anything five ten-ish on two legs could be inside all of that black fabric. They could have been really tall geckos or very balanced circus dogs.
And they were actually from Spain! I don't remember how we knew that, either. In my defense it was a really odd night what with trying to beat our friends to some city several hundred miles north in a fantastical yet contemporary (Jane and Emma were in a car, remember) update of Verne. We couldn’t stop to gawk because Ruth had to get us to somewhere in the station where she could do her special travel ability.
p.s. All of that was a dream. An antihistamine induced dream. There's no title. Tho it reads as fiction, it's really an allegorical essay on why I don't even try hallucinogenic or other reality-warping mind-altering drugs.
Because this is what I get just taking a super badic OTC med so maybe I can kind of breathe a bit and maybe not itch so damn much.
This is where my brain said, "Nope. No more. This has become entirely too ridiculous." My brain had been arguing logic with, well, I guess another part of my brain throughout this dream. It took issue with the whole Boston or wherever sequence. It really disliked never knowing exactly what city we were meant to be in. It kicked up only a mild fuss at Ruth being able to whisk us away popping up in a city far far away in only seconds but only if we started the journey in Hville. I guess odd as that is, it fell within some allowable dream-logic archetype.
But the grand inquisitor reenactors from Spain -- that was the point at which it could take no more.
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