The Artist And The Spectre

Chapter I

The window was cold on Rowan's cheek as the train snaked its way through the countryside, the soothing rumble of it gentle and coaxing against her closed eyelids.

Dreams and memories mingled in her mind's eye.
She caught a glimpse of her guardian's sweet face twist in uneasy concern; an image of her mother's bloodshot eyes; at some point she even heard her therapist's disembodied, hushed voice speaking from beyond a shut door. 
Her consciousness recoiled at the jagged, torbid feeling of these brief flashes. It retreated within itself, sinking in a empty but nonetheless comforting nothingness.

The speaker crackled to life. One distorted voice of a train operator announced the name of Rowan's station before fizzling out into the dull roar of the engine. Reluctantly, the young girl opened her eyes.

Sunny, intensely green grassfields ruffled and writhed in the wind like the hair of an immense beast, a few lazy silvery canals zipping past the wagon in a blurry haze.
She shielded her eyes from the light.
Further out, its majesty encroaching more and more on the horizon, was the sea: it was incomprehensibly vast and blue with playful ribbons of foam danced across its surface, and it gleamed like the deepest night sky. It hugged the lush shore in a triumph of cobalt and green and golden light. 

Yet when she looked inward, she found that the beauty of it all had left her rather cold; more a hollow intellectual appreciation than a glowing warmth around the edges of her soul. This was expected, but the pang of sadness that knowledge brought still stung.

The shrill sound of the brakes jolted her out of contemplation. She pawed for her sketchbook and shrugged on her small duffel bag before lumbering off the steps and into the small station where her aunt and uncle should be waiting for her.

A big clock placed squarely above her head  informed her that the time was 12.43, a full hour earlier than she was supposed to arrive. 
The pretty brick station was empty, the few other passengers having already scuttled away. No middle-aged couple to be seen. Her uncles had not yet come to the station.
All the better, she thought.

Mechanically she sharpened a pencil with neat, practiced swipes of her boxcutter, sat down on a bench and folded open her drawing pad.
Relieved by the lack of curious or worried passerbies Rowan bent down and begun skimming the lead down the page, losing herself in the familiar, repetitive motions of sketching.