Journey Home

Chapter 4 - Message From the Gods

Union Station was a huge train station and if we had been interested in architecture and art, we would have stared in awe at the Mission Moderne design used throughout the structure. But we were not there for anything as common as sightseeing. We were trying to escape a living hell and we were closer to freedom than we had ever dared to hope.

We entered a long open hall with massive windows and marble floors. The ceilings were so high that they could have fit several more stories in that open space. Wooden crossbeams spanned the width of the ceiling and looked more like art than a utilitarian piece of the building. Below the beams hung six elegant chandeliers, and above them were hand-painted acoustic tiles. It was a dazzling site.

Everything echoed in the vast hall and to my wolf's ears, it was disorienting and made it impossible to distinctly hear. Frightened, I pressed myself into Tee's side.

The sun was beginning to rise, and the beams of light from the distant star crawled across the station floor. Every minute brought more people, and it was getting crowded. My wolf senses were becoming completely overwhelmed. 

Tee led us to some out-of-the-way seats, and we tried making ourselves small and unassuming. I knew we needed to explore, but the streams of people frightened me. I longed for the quiet of the tundra.

According to the train schedule I had taped to the bottom of my bed, we were looking for a train called the Starlight Express. It was a passenger train, and it left every day in the morning. I wanted to confirm what time it was leaving and where the train was. If we followed the plan in our story, we needed to sneak into the baggage cargo and travel as wolves. Travel time from here to Canada was two days.

It took an hour for us to build up the courage to leave our corner of the station. The big clock on the wall said it was 6:45. If the Starlight Express was going to leave this morning, we needed to start preparing.

"We need to start looking around.", I thought.

Tee stood up and shifted from foot to foot, his telltale sign that he was anxious. Regardless we needed to move. I nosed the backpack Tee had stolen and Tee picked it up.

"Stick together, no matter what. We don't want to get separated in the crowd. If we do, meet back here.", I said.

"Kay.", Tee said.

Maybe we were too small or maybe the runts didn't care, but no one made way for us, and we often found ourselves being swept away in a current of humans. I was nearly useless; all my senses were overloaded by the cacophony of smells and sounds. Tee was in his human form, and he found the conditions just as repulsive, but because our senses were muted when we were in our humanoid bodies, Tee managed better than I did. Thank Lupus for Tee because we would have missed our train otherwise.

It was Tee who figured out that they posted the train schedules on the big TVs hanging above us, but we couldn't make heads or tails of it. We stared at the schedule and its complicated text and tried to penetrate the mystery of the words and numbers. Our heads bounced from one shoulder to the other. Then I remembered how I had organized my train schedule and from there it was not long until we found the Starlight Express to Canada was leaving at 10 AM from track 8.

We decided to return to our corner and take stock of what was in Tee's backpack. On our way, we discovered a wonderful place called Starbucks. We pressed our noses against the glass looking at the plethora of treats. I may have drooled all over the display window. The humans guarding the food cooed and awwed over us and we walked away with muffins. Cuteness was an asset!

Back in our corner, Tee spilled the contents of the backpack onto the floor. There was a sweatshirt, three socks, track pants two sports bars, a refillable water bottle, a pocketknife, $32.75, a book, a flashlight, headphones, keys, pills, Band-Aids, M&Ms, skittles, a phone charger, playing cards, deodorant, one shoe, a bag of Doritos, and a rain jacket.