A Long(est) Night's Work
The conductor was ready and waiting as soon as the train doors open.
"I'm very sorry," they spoke and signed, then pointed to the electronic sign beside that was displaying the same message on loop. *This train car is closed. Please use the next one.*
The crowd of would-be passengers squinted incredulously at the empty, spotless, train car. It was late afternoon on Longest Night, and everyone who had put something off until the last minute was hurrying on their way: to gatherings, to favored dark sky reserves for meteor-watching, or just to a cozy night at home. The conductor knew full well that every other car was going to be that much more crowded and noisy, but--
Her hands were tied.
~Earlier Today~
A gentle tug of inertia was M.C.'s cue that the train had pulled away from the station, and she sighed in contentment. Out the window was a golden winter afternoon, the low-angled sunlight flashing off scattered drifts of snow and solar-glass windowpanes alike. But afternoon wouldn't last long--it was Longest Night in Owai's northern hemisphere, and the sun was setting fast.
M.C.'s ears twitched. Somewhere in the cabin there was a rasping, hissing, clicking noise. That was not a normal cabin noise: train cars rattled, whrrrd, and gently swayed. This was....animal. Was something stuck in the cabin?
She began searching, high and low. She checked under the seats. She scanned the intersections of metal cross-braces that birds always used for nests. She even checked inside the one seat cushion with the loose cover. But no, not until she pecked in the narrow cranny between the emergency manual control podium and the traincar wall did she spot it: a little grey koronok was scratching and scrabbling to pull the wires loose and pull the wall insulation out and collect it all into a next.
"Oh....oh little one, no. You can't be here." For the safety of the animals and the integrity of local ecosystems, animals were NOT allowed on Alurizan Rail Transport Networks. The planet-wide network could displace species into locations where they would become invasive, or animals could become habituated to contact with civilization.
Normally there were wardens and wildlife specialists who could be contacted in a time like this. But nearly everyone was off for the holiday, and M.C. didn't want to bother anyone for a wee little koronok. She had the training, she could, technically, handle this herself.
M.C. removed her hat and gripped it by the brim. In just a few minutes the train would be coming to its first stop outside Arberion. The doors would open and she could gently shoo the koronok outside and back into the woods. She reached out with her hat and nudged the beast.
The koronok, predictably, snapped at the hat. When the doors slid open to a soft *ding*, its tiny jaws were locked firmly around the band of the hat. M.C. couldn't bear to wrestle the little beast for the hat, and by the time the doors had shut and the train had moved on ("Next stop, Western Jurupa Station...."), the intrepid gray noodle had scrabbled with all six limbs such that M.C.'s hat was firmly and unquestionably Part Of The Nest.
"Aaaalllright then, you keep it." The rail line went from Arberion to Harbor. Once they were out of Jurupa, there wouldn't be any koronok-appropriate habitat. But once the train finished its route, there would be a specialist in Harbor that could help. In the meantime, this particular train car would have to be closed to the public.
~ A good many hours later ~
M.C. blinked and yawned. The nighttime hours on a gently shaking, rattling, retrotech train car had been far more soporiffic than they would have been if she'd had a single passenger to attend besides the koronok. She looked over her shoulder to see a beam of the new day's first light illuminate the little koronok nest and--oh.
Beside the curled-up koronok were four tiny pink hairless kits. A new dawn for not just one passenger, then.
The Midnight Conductor has only one passenger tonight, and they refuse to disembark.
Submitted By Zuki
for Winter 2025 DTE
・ View Favorites
Submitted: 21 hours ago ・
Last Updated: 7 hours ago
Characters
Mention This
In the rich text editor:
[thumb=7838]
In a comment:
[A Long(est) Night's Work by Zuki (Literature)](https://projectxeros.org/gallery/view/7838)
There are no comments yet.