The Thing with Feathers

Nadia hated train stations almost as much as she hated airports—too many people. She pressed her forehead against the window, watching the commotion on the platform as passengers waited to board the solar sky train. Two identical toddlers zig-zagged through the boarding line until their mother retrieved them. An elderly man blew his nose into a tissue, then tossed it to the ground before holding up his wrist band for the conductor to scan.  

“Freaking millennials,” she mumbled, rolling her eyes. A soft voice interrupted her musings.

“Excuse me, young lady, but I think you’re in my spot.”

Turning, she saw a silver-haired woman standing in the aisle, gripping the back of the seat as if to hold herself upright.  

Nadia forced a small smile. “Sorry, I thought it was open. I’ll move.” She stood and moved to the aisle to let the women pass.

“I take a little longer these days to get where I need to be,” the woman replied, smiling as she collapsed into her seat. “Not by choice, but I don’t mind, it gives me time to pay attention.” 

Nadia was not in the mood for conversation, but found she also had no choice—the surrounding seats were now filled.

“I bet you can still run circles around most of us,” she said. The woman let out a laugh. 

“If I could, there’d be no stopping me! Name’s Auriel. And you are?” She offered her hand.

“Nadia, nice to meet you,” she replied, gently shaking the woman’s hand.

“Lovely to meet you. What brings you aboard the Sun Chaser today?”

Sighing, Nadia replied, “I… needed to think.”

Auriel cocked her head sideways. “I used to ride the city bus from Levett Avenue across town to the mall and back again when I needed to think. This view is far better."

Nadia smiled. “I will take your word for it. What brought you to the sky train today?”

“My daughter thinks I’m tucked away in my hospice bed, but the nurse didn’t show. I figured—why waste a perfect opportunity? The day after tomorrow is my deathday, and I wanted a final ride before the last sunset.” Auriel paused as the train began to move. “Here we go!”

Nadia blinked and sat up straighter. “Oh… wow, I’m so sorry.”

Auriel waved a hand. “Hush with that nonsense. I lived my life with the end in mind. I have very few regrets. This is the last thing on my to-do list.” 

“Why this ride in particular? Aside from extending the day, of course.” Nadia was curious now. 

“My father. The solar sky train was his idea.”

“Are you serious? Holy shit!” Nadia clapped her hand over her mouth. 

“Holy shit, indeed,” Auriel said with a laugh. “I used to sit in our basement with him for hours after school while he drew up schematics and told me of his grand plans.”

“That is really cool. So he worked for SolTrain?” She asked. SolTrain was the company that first put out the solar sky train prototype when Nadia was a child. She grew up wanting to work there, but they went bankrupt before she graduated college. 

“No, SolTrain came along after he died. The patent rights died with him, but as you can see,” Auriel gestured at the train car, “His idea did not. When I return my borrowed star dust, I want to tell him about my last ride on his train. Even when the world found his ideas eccentric and unnecessary, I believed.”

“That must have been during the “drill baby, drill” days in the twenties,” Nadia remarked. “My mom tells stories all the time about growing up during the empire’s final years, how fragile egos and unchecked power and wealth nearly crushed the world. I tell her it’s depressing, but she insists the stories be told.”

“Your mother sounds wise,” Auriel said. “I remember that time well, myself—the chaos, the food lines, the gaslighting from the government promising to return America to some imaginary greatness. Most disregarded the horrors until personally affected. Nobody knew what was true anymore until they experienced it. Even then…,” she trailed off. 

Nadia snorted. “That hasn’t changed much. Hitting someone with a hammer is still usually the only way for them to acknowledge it hurts. And the State Council only listens when we don’t give them a choice. I’ve begun to wonder if anything we do matters.” There had been so many disappointments lately. 

“I guess we should just lay down and die then, eh? Oh well!” Auriel made a hand washing motion and laughed.

“What? No, that’s not what I mean…” Nadia grew silent for a moment as she gazed out the window where the cloudless blue sky appeared static even as the landscape blurred below. “Even with the progress we have made over the past forty years, it just doesn’t feel like enough.”

“Perhaps. We certainly can’t undo the climate damage that began in the mid-twentieth century. But does that mean there is no positive change to be had? What happens if we stop believing progress is possible, Nadia?” Auriel looked at her with intense blue eyes clouded by cataracts. 

“Yeah, I suppose that wouldn’t be great, obviously,” Nadia replied, unable to muster any real enthusiasm. “Being hopeful feels so unrealistic these days. People say I’m crazy and sometimes, I agree with them.”

“Child,” Auriel murmured softly. “What does hopelessness feel like? I see it weighing you. Tell me.”

Only mildly exasperated, Nadia looked up at the ceiling of the train car and the brilliant purple, pink, and golden hues of the painting that covered it. Before service began, the railway commissioned the artwork. It somehow made sense: a sunset painted on a train that was built to never experience one. 

“It feels like an inescapable darkness. Like I’m on the Sun Chaser, but the sun has set and will never rise again, and I’m just… stuck. It sucks. But I can’t afford to be delusional… Where is the line?”

“My dear, hope may feel as if it is rooted in delusion, but I would argue that, right along with the birds themselves, hope is the most necessary thing with feathers. Without it, we are stagnant. The world would shrivel up and die if no one entertained the notion that change was possible. What is an invention, every discovery, each child born, if not hope for more than what we have, what we are right now? Hope is, because it must be.” Auriel shifted and took Nadia’s hands into her own. “It spurs us onward, not only for ourselves, but for each other. This is not a matter of delusion, but one of love.”

Nadia stared at the bony, wrinkled flesh of the hands that held hers. Against her will, tears formed and threatened to fall. She gave a gentle squeeze. “How do I make them care?” She whispered. 

“You can’t,” Auriel replied, releasing her hands with a pat. “Despair is powerful in rooting us in place—you have to guide them there. Help them harness the love they have for each other and channel it into action. Show them what it looks like to always be secure in the belief that the world we want for ourselves and future generations is attainable. Without hope, we stand still, but with it, everything becomes possible. Strange how much depends on something you cannot touch and must produce from nothing, isn’t it?”

“What if there isn’t hope? What if it really is delusional because shit is too far gone?” Nadia exclaimed, abruptly leaning back in her seat. 

“Well, why don’t you just crawl up into my bed with me on my deathday and we can go together?” Auriel smirked. 

“So… you’re saying I ought to be delusional.” Nadia rolled her eyes but smiled despite herself.

“Only hope without action is foolish! It is absurd to expect things to get better while sitting on your couch doom-scrolling. Every step you take forward is a spark that others witness—and maybe, just maybe, they’ll take a step too,” Auriel patted Nadia’s knee and turned to stare at the horizon. 

Nadia swallowed the lump in her throat as the amber glow of the perpetually setting sun spilled across her face. Recalling her mother’s stories, she considered the battles won and lost, and the people who dared for something better, even when it seemed impossible. She pictured Auriel’s father, sketching out a dream no one else could see—until they did. The wise woman’s words echoed in her mind, a notion of something warm and familiar finding its way back. Nadia's own dreams, abandoned months earlier in frustration, called to her still against the world’s definition of reason. As the train rolled steadily toward the horizon, she felt a shift—an ember of possibility growing inside her. 

She turned to thank Auriel, but the woman had closed her eyes, a soft smile on her lips, bathed in the golden light of the setting sun. Nadia leaned back in her seat, finally releasing the heavy weight of her disillusionment. 

Hope is, because it must be.