Short story - Monogamous Flight

        He reached out his arm, with a desperate but determined look on his face. She wanted to hold onto it, with every fibre of her heart. “it can be just us, forever and for no one else”, he told her. She felt shame for every act against such an idea she had committed before now. Who could forgive such an ugliness, in the light of something so pure?, she thought. He assured her that where they could go together “all good things are framed in beauty and all darkness can be forgotten”. Darkness was so normal to them both, that she could not believe it and she expressed so. “How do you know that we can have this?”. He paused, and for a moment his faith trembled. “I don’t know”, he replied.

Activity could be heard in the distance, and they both turned to it with a panic. But even the delay of their potential separation by outside forces could not throw ice over a burning intensity to their unfinished words. She and her words were more important to him than what would happen if they were caught here, as they were. She was less brave to the idea of capture, because she was confused. More confused about what he had asked of her, and whether the darkness in their lives was too great and too unassailable.

Voices could now be heard in the distance, somewhere under the night sky. Their dialogue was inaudible, but it was clear that they were collaborating, finding. He had selected this place, the abandoned station, reclaimed by the bramble and shrubs. He knew that slow moving freight carriages still used the line, headed for the North. They usually came every hour or so in the night, where there could be no interruption by passenger traffic, even though this station was abandoned. 

       “Where would we go?”, she asked. She was whispering now, but he was not. “The Freighters that come through here”, he answered, “they all head to the north of the country”. One of the men that once shared his dormitory was a freight operative and told him much of what he saw when he was working in other provinces. She had no knowing of anything at all outside of her dormitory, workplace or designated social bubble during virus outbreaks and re-emergences. “How do you know it’s going to be different up there?”, she asked him. He had nothing to give back except more regurgitated accounts of his former cohabitant. “There are less people there, there is more space”. She was feeling flushes of reluctance to be convinced, in the heat of their imminent capture. He entered a state of near trance as he continued… “There are more hills… and valleys! So that people must go over their horizon to visit each other’s homes. People can be private and live as they wish”. She was becoming more and more captivated with every line he added to his promised and imagined place in the distant northern province, far away from wherever they were.

He knew deep behind his optimism, that he could not know for certain what life was like north of here, and that it could in fact be the same culture of dormitories and normative promiscuity as far as the land goes. But he thought that even if that was so, that up where vast countryside separated the sparse settlements, that somewhere, just somewhere, they could go and not be found by any of it.

Just as she could air her last uncertainties, a far-off glow awakened on the distant track. It was a long row of carriages, carrying wind turbine parts and batteries, so heavy a load that it moved about twice that of walking pace. “I don’t have any money”, she confessed. “if I access my account wherever we go, they will know that we left our quarantine and social bubbles”. He eagerly surveyed what he could make out of the distant freighter and turned to her. “You don’t have to worry about any of that”, he replied. “I emptied my account this morning and I have enough for the both of us, wherever we go, for some time”.

The light of the slowly approaching carriages was now joined in luminous traffic by the on-site security of the disused station’s torches, almost equidistant to them and the train. As the train’s cargo started to become distinguishable to them and the security’s words were almost revealing the inflections of their regional accents, she whispered in a despairing tone: “What if we just go back now, would be alright?”. It was obvious that just for a moment, she was weighing up whether getting caught or returning would mean enough trouble that this was now actually the more sensible option. 

       He grabbed for her waist with both hands, pivoted her torso towards his, like how he would when he kissed her. Their eyes were locked on each other’s and he now whispered too, for he feared how close they may have been. “If I go back there tonight, I will manage, I will live on. I will continue to distract myself from what I really think about the world around me, with small and shallow things. I will surround myself with people I do not very much long to know, but who I must talk to for my own sake. I will lie about everyone and everything, so that I do not get in the way of what they think they must do”. She wanted to kiss him, but she wanted to listen more. The head of the train now reached them and because the carriages were long, they had a large window to make the decision to go with it. He went to finish his words: “and last of all, I will never really have y- “-I want to” she interrupted.

He knew that if they waited too much longer to mount a carriage, the security workers might have alerted the train operatives or the next station’s security. He got to his feet and approached a part of the carriage with some space to slot two people between the cargo comfortably. She followed without hesitation. At jogging pace, matching that of the train’s, he launched her up onto the moving carriage. It was not a smooth boarding but jogging while ascending a five-foot-high platform was a strenuous feat for someone just six inches taller than it. He clambered up after her and she helped where she could. The train made enough of a racket that their jogging in the gravel beside the track was covered and because they were on the opposite side of the train to where the security’s torchlight was coming from, they were confident they were unseen.

Now aboard the train, they were mildly exerted but sedate with a rush of adrenaline as they watched the only province they had ever known, slowly drifting past in the darkness. Between two giant batteries and under an overlaying wind turbine blade, they sat. She rested her head on his chest and he hung his arm around her shoulders and side. The freighter broke out into a clearing amongst the trees and bramble and rose uphill above the mild, monotonous terrain. They could see now, hatching over the horizon, the yolk of a new day and the darkness receding over them.

When dawn arrived, it occurred to him that although the station was abandoned, the track might pass through peopled places. They were protected from rain by the turbine blade, and from cold by each other, but their sides were exposed to any onlooker watching the train from its perpendicular. “Stay here, I’m going to see whether there is any place better for us on this train”. “Alright”, she nodded. 

       The weather was kind to them that day. The morning sun was even warm on the skin. The clouds speckled like dashed foam across the sapphire morning sky. It was the third quadrant of the year, but it still carried with it some of the most pleasant heat of the second quadrant’s weather, spilling over because it was still young. 

       While he traversed the neighbouring carriages, she thought to herself about the others in her dormitory and what they would think. She had only known them for a year. She thought more about her dormitory group before that one, with whom she was homed throughout university. She grew closer to those people than the ones she lived with afterwards. She wondered whether those people might miss or mourn her. She wondered after all the time since they had parted ways, that she would still even get on with them. She enjoyed getting drunk with them, but when she consulted them on things that affected her, they were rendered immobile in their supportive faculties. They knew only evasive humour and pursuing pleasure together. In their awkwardness, they would dismiss matters too deep for their emotional range to encompass, with poor and distracting one-liners. It wasn’t much their fault. Their world was a temporary one, with dilute and functional relationships. She too learned to dismiss these feelings, when they pulled her away from a consistent persona. She could practice this emotional evasiveness with everybody, except for him. He hated it when she tried it on him, and he always let her know.

       Before she could reflect any further, she heard metallic clatters and ringing outs of machinery as he made his way back across the cargo to her. She received him with a warm but alert glare. “What did you see?”, she asked. “The carriages are all stacked like this, as far as I could go”, he said. “We will just have to keep our heads down if we pass by some place”. They both looked ahead from the sides of the train and saw mostly hedgerows lining either side of the track, but every few yards a slit or opening in the foliage would reveal a field or meadow behind.

When they both settled again, he pulled from his inner coat-pocket an old rumpled map. It was one obtained from the train-operative he lived with. The years since had taken their toll on its structural integrity. What were once creases in the panels of its folds were now fluffy protrusions of ruptured paper, weak to just a timid, clumsy, tug. But he took care of it. He showed her the map and pointed to the province he believed was from where they had come. “what does ‘Province MS’ mean?”, she asked him. He didn’t know. “Maybe it’s middle something, because we are in the middle of the land. The only other province they had both heard of was Province L, because it was the Capital. They would have to send and receive things from there, in both of their job roles. There was never a proper reason to know anywhere else, other than curiosity, which few possessed.

When the train passed an old sign, they both rushed to one side of the carriage to get a clearer look. Thick green patches of mossy substance coated the sign in places and both its metal posts. With this green skin, the posts looked not dissimilar to the weeds and bushes that had swallowed them, but the sign was still readable. She tried to read the archaic word aloud. “welcome to ‘Leekestuh-Shiyah’”. He looked to his provincial map but could not find the word ‘Leicestershire’  anywhere on it. “it must be a small place”, he thought out loud. “they only put bigger places on maps”.

Their excitement for every cryptic detail they found in this virgin landscape could not faked. They were like small children, and fittingly, two days without sleep was starting to show. They sat again, with their backs against the battery. He turned for a minute and when he looked back to her, she was fast asleep. He followed her this time, just a few minutes behind. They slept through most of that day’s sunlight with ease.

They were at peace when they awoke. She did before him. She sat, still resting, absorbing the evening sunlight. The sun was at such an angle, now close to the horizon, that it hit the train sideways. She took a moment to observe everything around her. Everything was still. No wind rustled the trees, the clouds were motionless, and he was still asleep. Even the train was resting like they were. Then she paused, opened her eyes wider and erected her spine.

“We’ve stopped” she said, worriedly and loudly, enough to arrest him from his final stage of sleep. He sprung up with her. “What? Where are we?”, he asked to anybody that was listening, with a startled expression. Realizing how loud they had already been, they dropped to whispering once again. They were afraid of who they might have already alerted in the silence of that evening.

They both looked either way out of both sides of the train, and all that they could see was another disused railway station near the front of the carriages. Behind the station, they spotted what looked like the tips of buildings in a settlement. He whispered, “Maybe we are at leekestah-shiyah”. “Do you think this is where the train stops?” she asked. “I don’t think so, there’s not much to stop here for…”. He paused, thought, and went on. “I think we should get off here and have a look”. “What? Why?”, she nervously replied. “There will be more freight trains through here, later tonight. I want to have a look at leekester-shiyah”. She sighed and he queried her. “What do you think? Are you okay with that?”. She was not ‘okay’ with anything that was asked of her right now, but this did not mean she was unwilling. Ironically, she replied, “Okay”.

They had not realized until now, just how loudly the train’s locomotion muzzled the sounds of their movements on the metallic surfaces. Every step or shuffle on the carriages’ platform conjured reverberating twang that resonated through the machinery and made their hearts skip. They feared more, however, descending onto the gravel below with their body weights. Gravel is an impossible surface to employ stealth on. As their feet carefully graced the Earth, they tried as best they could to keep the crunching minimal. Once they had waddled onto the adjacent grass, they sprinted to a bush row. They were roughly 200 metres down from the station, against a fence. There they sat, until just 10 minutes after, the train started moving again.

When the freight had completely departed the station, they thought it safe to leave the bushes and approach it. 

       “I’m excited now”, she admitted. He knew she would be. She was always concerned first and excited second. As they got closer to the old station, the signs became clearer. The signs read ‘Shackerstone’. “shacker-stone” She read aloud. She had almost got that one right. “Damn it”, he sullenly expressed. “What’s wrong?”, she inquired. “We must have passed through leekestah-shiyah while we were sleeping”.