Lauren--Part Twenty-Four

Splog # 81

Twenty-Four

   Lauren walked to the edge of the marble platform and took a good long look at the country on the other side of the train tracks. She tried to see if there was a path or a trail or any indication of the direction in which she would find the inn Splog had mentioned as her destination. Turning to look both to her left and her right, she saw nothing but an uninterrupted sward of grass leading slightly upward away from the Fe-San. The grass was an unbroken green carpet with no sign of path or flower, tree or bush. As she combed the expanse of monotonous green with her eyes, she began to find the color somehow off-putting. It wasn't the vibrant and varicolored green that covered her hill back home. For one thing, the hue of green was almost uniform throughout the whole field. There was none of the variation that she was used to seeing on her hill. There were a couple of places where it seemed a tint lighter or darker but, in general, the entire scene before her was practically all one shade of green. And that shade wasn't one that shared in the harmony of nature that, to Lauren, seemed a part of all growing things. At first glance nothing seemed wrong but, after looking at it for a while, the color seemed dull and flat, as though the grass, being found unhealthy, had been injected with an artificial color that didn't quite agree with it.

   "Well, whatever's wrong with the grass, there's nothing to do but head over there and see if I can find that inn."

   She took another look around to see if there was anything or anybody to give her a bit of encouragement. There was the Fe-San rising into the white sky. There was the bench with an unlit lamp at each end of it. And there was herself, Lauren, who would have to supply her own encouragement.

   Looking at the ditch that the train tracks ran in and wondering if she should try to jump over it, she noticed, a few feet to her right, two shallow marble steps leading down and two more on the other side leading up. With one last glance around the platform, she crossed to the steps and descended. To her surprise, as soon as she stepped across the first rail, the sound of a train moving at top speed assaulted her ears. She quickly ran across the other rail, up the steps and into the field, only to find that the sound had vanished instantly the moment she had set foot outside the confines of the train tracks. She stood, panting and confused, looking and listening for a train that didn't seem to exist. She came back to the groove the tracks ran in and looked left and right. Then she cautiously went down the two steps and lightly touched her left foot in between the rails. Once again, her ears were blasted by an oncoming locomotive and the force was so immediate that she repeated her dash up the steps and into the field. This time, in the silence that had fallen as soon as she removed her foot, she collapsed onto the grass giggling.

   She was wondering if the sound was some kind of warning as her breathing relaxed and her laughter subsided. And then she found that there was another sound growing in her ears. It didn't take long for the sound to resolve itself into an energetic barking and she jumped up and looked all around her, calling "Austin! Austin!"