Things I Almost Remember: A Selection Story

Ten Years Later

Kate walked through the cold snow and icy wind as she moved toward the train station in the center of Nieve. Nieve known both for being the largest city in the province of Hudson and for having incredibly harsh winters. However, a harsh winter was nothing that would stop Kate. 

Kate pulled her long worn wool coat tighter and rewrapped her hand knitted scarf tighter around her neck as a particularly harsh gust of wind blew up the street from the opposite direction. Finally, at the sight of an old wooden sign that read "Nieve Train Station" on the large brick building, Kate smiled. This is what she had come all this way to find, and she  would be  there in just a few more steps.

Kate had been on her own for a  while, and Nieve, particularly the Nieve train station, had been the destination she had been moving toward for far too long. Nothing had been very easy for Kate, but she had held hope that she would get to this place, this place that would take her one step further to getting to the one place she wanted to go, the one place that might finally have the answers she had been searching for for so long.

Kate got so caught up on the thought of the possibilities the old brick building held that she had forgotten to watch where she was going and ran straight into a young man walking in the opposite direction.

"Hey, watch it!" the man said stumbling back a few steps but remaining on his feet.

"I'm terribly sorry. I just am excited to finally be um, I mean, the building is just so beautiful, I guess I got caught staring at it," Kate said.

The boy cocked his head at her in confusion. The building had peeling paint, cracked windows, and was as cold inside as it was outside. 

"Well I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder," the man said, looking back at the building as if trying to reassess it. He gave up quickly and shook his head, turning back to Kate.

"You got a name? I don't think I've seen you around here before," the man said. 

Kate thought it sounded more like a demand than a question.

"Kate," she said.

"Kate what? What's your last name? There are plenty of Kates in Nieve," the man said, giving her a quick up-and-down. 

Kate had long dark brown hair that fell nearly to her waist, but  she always wore it in a long  braid to keep  it out of her face. She wore a fisherman's cap, an oversized worn wool coat,  dark colored  trousers, and sturdy but beat up boots that were covered in dust and mud. 

"Just Kate," she said. "Just Kate is all I know," she muttered under her breath.

"Well I'm Johnny Abernathy, and I can tell you that you are not going to have much luck at getting a train ticket unless you're ready to pay a fortune," Johnny said with a tone that implied a fortune was something he did not believe Kate and her dirty boots and worn clothes had. 

"I have been saving for a long time for a ticket," Kate said. "Now if you'll excuse me."

"Suit yourself," Johnny said and swaggered off. 

Kate tried her best to brush off the encounter and she walked through the large door into the train station. She walked up to the ticket counter located just off the entrance and pulled a bag of coins out of her coat  pocket.

"I would like ticket to Cape York in Allens, right along the coast," Kate said to the woman working the ticket counter.

The woman gave Kate a look that reminded her of the way that Johnny had just looked at her, and she began to get a bit frustrated. 

"Deary," the woman said condescendingly. "That is going to be a hundred times over what that coat you have on costs. In addition to that, do you even have a Passport?"