Train Tracks into Uncharted Territory

[guy]

Finally.
This was the first empty compartment Guy had actually managed to find after passing a thirty- or so- that were completely choc-a-bloc. The students arrived and sat in bunches; just like they- apparently- did all year. At Orchid Hill, there was no real system as to when term started and ended, and when students turned up and disappeared. As long as they passed their exams, and did their duty to their Heads, the students were basically left to run wild. Obviously, there were more important things concerning its teachers than a rogue runner in the corridor, or some random underage smoker.
And yet somehow, Orchid Hill was still the most prestigious, highly respected and highly attended school for the gifted worldwide. There was no finer academy than Orchid; no finer staff, no finer resources, and no school produced finer results.
The only drawback was that a war just happened to rage around it, and that students were directly involved in combat, often resulting in the deaths of more than a few of them. A major disadvantage, yes, but Guy supposed it did give students that ever so helpful boost towards adulthood: life experience.
Personally, Guy wasn’t all that interested in life experience.
Not the kind the humans liked to talk about, anyway.
Gods. This was all so new.
Feeling oddly out of place, Guy pushed the sliding door closed behind him, and sank down into the seat closest to the window. From all around him came the sound the running footsteps; the devastated farewells of parents; the laughter of friends reunited after a long summer. Meanwhile, he was stuck in here, alone, and silent. Silence made him notice things.
Like how the train compartment smelt… odd. Of leather and mint. Nothing natural; but since when had humans been into anything natural? It was like nothing you’d smell out there, in the fresh open air.
Guy wished he knew how to open the window.
The clouds were white overhead; the sky was blue; a weak sunlight shone, its rays alighting the flecks of dust that floated across the compartment, making them look like flecks of gold... not the dead bits of skin and dirt that they actually were. Sunlight had the power to make almost anything look beautiful.
Guy’s backpack sat beside him. He’d felt a little odd, carrying it through the situation, as he’d passed his fellow pupils. Some carried whole mountains of luggage with them, which puffing parents had been somehow manipulated into pulling along. All he’d had was his backpack; which was just about ¾ of the way full. He’d his clothes, a brush, a toothbrush, another pair of shoes… and that was it. Right now, he was wearing… trainers, was what you called them. Dad had given him all the things from the pile of human stuff they’d salvaged over the years from Africa. Dad said that, apparently, they were ‘necessities’.
Guy looked towards the giant clock that sat outside. He’d learned to read the time at Manse-Waters, and it currently read as 09.28. So the train left in approximately 2 minutes. The onslaught of students had definitely subdued, and the masses of mourning parents seemed to have reached its peak.
09.29.
Guy smiled, and leaned back on his seat.
Any second now… and he’d be on his way.

[Estella Cijan]

Estella gave her mother one last hug, before taking hold of Lena's wrist, dragging her towards the door. Lena tried to struggle away from her, but Estella tightened her grasp, and waved towards their parents, who were trying to push back tears. It was hard for them, and she knew it. It wasn't easy, always knowing the more private thoughts of her parents, and she knew that her mother was worried about her daughters going into a proper school, half way across the country. Her father took a more sterner approach to it, he has really turned himself off after his mother died.
"Lena, we have to find a seat." She hissed, after the doors closed, and she had waved so much that it felt that her hand was about to drop off.
"I don't want to go." She heard a voice come from her sister's mind.
Estella glanced down to her, and then slid into a seat, after placing her luggage above their heads.
"We have to, I'm sorry." She whispered. Magdalena put her arms on the table infront of them, and set her head on top of them, while taking little handfuls of light and playing with it. Her mind was still worried about going to a new school, and Estella smiled, knowing that she wouldn't be able to talk to her for some time before she fully calmed down.
She sighed, and listened around her, to both what people were speaking, and what they were thinking. It was strange, being in busy places, having so many voices at once, but she was able to turn them down after a while. She looked around her, and felt the train jolt, as it began to leave the station. Across from her was a boy sitting by himself. She smiled at him, and then turned around to her sister. She was now singing her in her head, Estella knew that she had that song stuck in her head for a few days now.
She watched the buldings fly by as they began to pick up speed.
Well, only a few hours to go until their inpending fate. School.

[guy]

09.34.
09.34.
4 minutes, and the train had only just started moving!
Were trains always late? That was ridiculous. 09.34. Why would a train be late? Not that the students would be overly... eager to get to school, or anything but... they'd made a schedule. Why make a schedule if you weren't going to keep to a schedule?
And worse still, two females had arrived in the time that the train was supposedly meant to leave in. Two. Before today, Guy had seen a total of one female in his entire life. Today, he had lost count after thirty.
And they were...
He didn't...
What were they?
The taller girl had smiled at him on her way in, confusing him. How odd. The first female human to ever smile at him; not the fake smile that woman who had sold him a ticket had given him- that smile had been real, if a little awkward.
At least they were silent.
Or were they silent because he was meant to speak first?
Was he meant to speak at all?
Human courteousness was something completely alien to him. He never knew what was polite and what wasn't. He thought he'd been doing well today- he'd called the female ticket-giver, 'sir,' and everything, but for some reason, her fake smile had turned to a scowl, and she asked him if he was trying to be funny.
He'd told her he wasn't, but that seemed to make things worse.
Maybe he should say something.
But the silence that stretched between them was far more comfortable.
Nervously, his hand moved over his backpack, and he inhaled.
He had to make friends with members of females species eventually. Human female contact was unavoidable at Orchid. He'd always known that. But the reality of it- the living and the doing and the talking- it was completely different.
He was completely incompetent when it came to girls. Luckily, he'd heard many other males of his own age were too. So maybe it wouldn't seem... so odd.
He glanced at the two girls.
Now or never.
"Hi. I'm Guy. Who're you?"
Yes. Yes, that sounded alright.

[Estella Cijan]

It took Estella a few seconds to realise that the voice wasn't from someone's thoughts but something that was actually being directed to her. She turned around and looked at the boy whom was apparently called Guy.
"I'm Estella. This is Magdalena." She siad, gesturing to her sister. Lena looked up at Estella and then over to Guy.
"Who's he?" She asked in her mind.
"This is Guy. Where're you from, Guy?" She asked, picking up from his thoughts that he seemed slightly uncomfortable talking to them. Lena seemed to have lost interest in what was happening, and went back to her own thoughts, most about the movie that she had watched recently. She was replaying the same scene that she always did, and it wa starting to annoy Estella now, always hearing the same dialogue, especially when she got a line wrong.
Forgetting about it, she turned back to the boy, trying to ignore other's thoughts.

[guy]

Guy turned in his seat, twisting around so that he could meet her eyes properly.
Estella.
He'd have to remember that.
Pleased to have an excuse to observe the female, Guy drank her in greedily. The first strange thing was her hair. No female from his colony had hair so very dark- it was the males who had jet black hair. Certainly, there had been human girls outside with hair, but Estella definitely had the blackest hair he'd seen yet. Her eyes were... nice. An odd colour combination; a sort of grey-tainted blue. The shape of her face interested him particularly; she had high, cheekbones, her jaw was slender, and the combination gave her an elegant look he'd never seen before.
He wondered if this meant she was pretty, or not.
Whatever the case, he thought that he probably liked it.
"I'm from... well," he stopped, considering how best to answer her question. "I come from Spain, but I spent most of my life in South Africa. Me and my family moved here recently." Feeling uncharacteristically shy, he looked at her curiously. "What about you? Where are you from?"

[Estella Cijan]

Estella smiled to herself while reading his mind, his opinions on her. But his mind was strange, it didn't seem as...wide as others were. Usually there were blocked full of their troubles, and whatever else, but his seemed very simple.
"We're from Porto, Portugal, but we've been living in England for a few years. We were always home schooled by our avó, our, um, grandmother. But she died a few months ago." She said, quietly, still feeling slightly choked up when she talked about her grandmother. She saw Lena glanced up when she mentioned her, and then set her head back down, ignoring them again.
"Do you go to the school, or are you starting?" She asked, pushing her hair behind her ear. "We're just starting here, so it's weird, we haven't been to a proper school before."

[guy]

Accents were an adjustment.
It had been bad enough trying to learn English from Africans, when it was only their second language, but now, he realised, there would be a further adjustment to make. He was confident of his articulation, and of his grammar, but as for hers... he could not always quite be so sure. The sound was interesting; she sped up on certain syllables, and slowed on others. Her voice was low, and quite throaty, and he found it odd how she seemed to skim over- or at least completely miss- certain letters.
He would never be so clumsy.
"I have," he told her, a hint of pride colouring his voice. So she was a human he already had more experience than. How interesting. Was she sheltered? "I went to Manse-Waters Academy for Boys in Africa. We had to wear a uniform, so I think I might like Orchid Hill better."

[Estella Cijan]

Estella went slightly pale, listening to his thoughts. This was one of the reasons that she hated being able to read people's minds. She could always hear what they thought. Who was he to judge her? They had only met for a few mintues, and he was thinking these types of things about her. Well, maybe he was just like that.
"Really, I'm sure that was fun. I'm sorry, are you able to understand my accent? I can talk slowly, if you want..." She said, lowering her voice.
Lena looked up, and finally hoisted herself up, to sit back on the seat.
"Stella, what did he say?"
She heard her sister's voice float into her head. Estella looked at her and rolled her eyes, signalling that it wasn't very nice. Lena straightened up, almost getting ready to hit him, or something. Sometimes it was easy having a sister who could heal people, but it was also difficult having one that could also hurt them too.
Estella shook her head slowly, and Lena sat back down in her seat, to starte out the window. Estella turned back around to Guy, and smiled.
"So, um, what are your powers?" She asked, tapping her fingers on the table.

[guy]

"Er..."
Guy had started slightly at the glare Estella's sister had given him. He didn't quite understand where it had come from. Perhaps he was breaking some kind of unspoken taboo by addressing her sister. Perhaps the girl was just jealous. She might be if Estella and her always spent time with each other, and she wasn't used to Estella talking to other people.
Still, he liked what Estella had said about her accent. It seemed very thoughtful of her to consider that she mayn't be very articulate.
"Please, speak as you normally would," he told her, as warmly as he could, "I need to learn how to understand other peoples' accents properly. And... my powers?" He counted them off in his head. "Lightning control, X-Ray vision, and I can remember everything I've ever read."
His interest in Estella was growing. He didn't care much for Magdalena- he wasn't sure he liked the reception she'd given him- but Estella seemed a perfectly reasonable creature.
And he'd been worried about human females!
"What about you?"

[Estella Cijan]

Estella gave a smug smile. "Well, I wouldn't give that away too early, would I now?" She said, turning away from him, to look out the window. His mind was so strange, why did he keep calling them 'human females'? And his little comments on Magdalena wouldn't be forgotten.
She turned her attention away to a girl who was sitting behind her, who was thinking about a conversation that she seemed to have with her mother.
"Augh, I should have just said that I'd go with her, it's not like I knew that Rosemary would be there...", she thought, getting angrier as she thought more about it. Estella let that voice drift into the main batch of voice that were talking in her head. Some people were just day-dreaming while staring out the window at the fields that they passed, so it was harder to pick up on their thoughts, and she could hear the people around her's thoughts more clrealy than those who were sitting futher from her. She started to let her own mind wonder, but then turned around to Guy again.
"So, x-ray vision, do you have that all of the time, or can you turn it on and off?" She asked, looking at him.

[guy]

"Oh, off and on," he said, a little reluctantly, now that she had chosen not to reveal her powers to him.
In a way, it made her an even more fascinating subject, but in another way, it reminded him unpleasantly of Leroc and his friends, who always teased him when he was growing up. But it was only natural. He was small, and weak in comparison with the rest of the colony- as a human, he may be strong, but with them...
Goblins were renowned for their brute strength.
As a boy, he'd been beaten black and blue, but his mother had always told him it was part of growing up. He knew that now, but as a child... well... he was, after all, only human.
So he'd balled.
"What about you, Magdalena?" Guy tentatively tried to engage, and make peace with Estella's sister. "Will you tell me your powers?"
The girl still had not spoken to him. He wondered if this was her being rude. He definitely knew he was being slighted.
So if you were slighted, it was rude.
Yes.
That was right.
Magdalena was rude.

[Estella Cijan]

"Why the heck do you need to know?" Lena thought to herself, looking up at Guy. Estella bit the inside of her mouth to stop herself from laughing, yes, maybe her sister was beinga bit rude.
"I can control light." Lena said, showing him by grasping a small bit of light from the window, and pulled it out, having little bits stuck to each of her fingers. She then let it go and rubbed her hands, smiling. Estella didn't know how she could do it, but her sister was able absorb all the light in a room, and make it dark, even when there were windows letting in natural light.
"And I always know where I am and going. For example, I know that we have exactly one hour and thirteen minutes left of this journey, and we will be passing three fields that are lined by trees, while the train goes around a curve." She said, looking up at the celeing. "And," She said, sighing, "I can heal people, but I can sort of heal them of, well, anything, but I think I sort of absorb it, but it dosen't affect me, but I can also make people sick with whatever I absorb, you know? So, don't make me angry." She said, smiling. Estella smiled aswell, at her sister's comments on the boy in her mind. When Lena was finished, she turned around to the window again, her eyes flickering while watching some animals that they passed.
Estella was silent for some minutes, staring blankly infront of her. A few moments later, she turned around again and looked out of the opposite window, the one the Guy was sitting by. Finally she sighed, and rubbed her eyes, deciding to say some more.
"Do you know if they sell food anywhere on the train. I'm kind of hungy..." She said, tilting her head around her seat to look down the corridor. She heard someone think about a foor cart that was apparently on the train, and she was curious.

[guy]

"No idea," Guy replied, suddenly ravenous.
It was too bad. A few loose human coins jingled in right pocket. He didn't have too much- just about around 5 pounds or so, because he thought he wouldn't need too many clothes. It was really for another train ticket, just in case he needed it. The human concept of buying food was bizarre.
He usually hunted if he was hungry.
Still, instinctively, his hand slipped into his pocket, fingering a pound wistfully.
"What kind of food... would they have?" he asked. "If they have it, that is."

[Estella Cijan]

"I'm not...sure..." She said, listening around her, but no-one was giving her any ideas on what they could be selling. One person was thinking about food, but nothing that helped her. Maybe she would have a look about. "'l'll go look for it, stretch my legs." She said, standing up. She began to walk down the corridor, and when she came to the end of her carriage, while walking though the section that joined the carriages together, she became invisible. She felt safe when she was invisible, people weren't looking at her, or trying to advoid looking at her, they didn't care. She walked down the corridor, and spotted a small cart being pushed by a woman. She walked up to her, becoming visible again, and smiling to herself at the confused thoughts of people who saw her appearing. She went up to the woman, pushing the cart.
"Hello, can I have something to eat?" She asked, looking down at the cart. The woman looked at her and sighed.
"Where're you sitting?" She woman asked, not realising that Estella was listening to her additional comments.
"Eh, in the next carriage..."
"Right, you go sit back down, luv, and I'll come and sell you food there." She said, tapping her foot until Estella moved. She turned and walked back, slightly confused at why she couldn't get food there.
"Did you get anything?" Lena asked her, when she sat down.
"No..no, I have to wait." She answered, feeling pale from being told what to do. "We wait until she comes down."

[guy]

An awkward silence had spread between Magdalena and Guy in Estella's absence. Outside, the relief of the land was becoming sharper and more ragged. Guy knew Orchid Hill was located specifically in Scotland, and that it was a more hilly country than England. But before they reached Orchid, they'd have to pass over a barren landscape known as, 'No Man's Land', where most of the battles for Orchid Hill took place.
He wondered how many had died there, and how many still would. A grim thought, yes, but it successfully distracted him until he once again saw Estella reappear.
"Did you get anything?" Magdalena asked.
"No.. no, I have to wait. We wait until she comes down," Estella replied.
Guy returned to their conversation. "So you can turn invisible. That's one of your powers. I saw you do it, but it doesn't work properly. I can see you with my X-Ray Vision."
Actually, he'd followed her through several compartments before looking back outside.