An Escapade a Day

Untitled Part 1

Kia settled into her seat and heaved a sigh of relief. Her day had been a spectacular mess so far and she couldn't wait to get back to the quiet peace of her book. Ahead of the much-awaited reunion; her attention was pulled to a family settling in the seats diagonally in front of her. The couple was arguing about some property and its affordability, a topic she couldn't be interested in and the kids: a girl of maybe ten years with her doll, and a boy of probably twelve occupied with his Gameboy. Kia tried shifting her focus back but her attention wavered again after the sixth page. Maybe she knew the family? She got up to get a better look of the parents in the pretense of grabbing something from her overhead luggage. But before she could, the train jerked and roughly threw her back to her seat at the same time as a doll, timed brilliantly. She brought it to the little girl and her smiling parents, but she couldn't recognize any of them.

It nagged her like a stubborn, buzzing housefly. Annoyed at her persistence, she scrolled through her phone. An instinctive scroll to a random comic book post muddled her further. Why did she? Why a comic? Oh my god! It then dawned on her; she had unknowingly noticed a comic book the family had, twice, and it happened to be of a series from her childhood. A stroke of fortunate serendipity connected the dots further to a frozen memory.

It had been a bright holiday morning and little Kia was grumpy because her mother had refused to let her take her comic book on the train. She didn't remember the reason but she remembered that even having her own seat couldn't cheer her up. On the platform, she had to snake her way through giants rushing to board their trains. Even then, most of her trip had passed in wonderment of speeding trees and kids racing across paddy fields. Her brother happened to notice a bookstall selling the latest edition of that comic series during a halt. Kia delightfully accepted his suggestion and got down with him. By God's grace, their father had noticed and alerted them in the nick of time, they dashed back to the train as the door closed behind her brother. Clutching onto the comic dearly she forgot all about her freshly scraped knee. To her, it had been one of her greatest adventures.

A beaming smile took over her face now. In the fading reminiscing of her childhood, she realized that in retrospect, her day had been rather fun. Her shower broke only after she had finished, her spectacles had to be replaced anyway; the sprint to board her train was exhilarating and the insistent thought reintroduced her to a dear memory. No less than adventures.