Westbound Train to Kansas

September 29, 1871

The whistle blew long before dawn, echoing through the valleys like a warning lost to time. I hadn’t slept. Instead, I sat in the narrow corridor between cars, wrapped in a shawl that smelled faintly of smoke and roses. The world outside was dark, but the glass caught slivers of moonlight — jagged reflections that danced like spirits across my hands.

I turned them over again and again, studying the creases in my palms, the faint scar that pulsed at the center. What did she do to me? The mark was nothing more than a healed cut now, but it hummed in my skin as if inked with something older than blood.

Abigail passed by just after sunup, her children still asleep in the berth behind her. She did not speak. Her eyes met mine only briefly, but something passed between us — not warmth, not disdain, but recognition. I wondered if she, too, had felt it… the shift. The line between dream and vision. Between choice and curse.

Later, a porter brought me tea I did not order. A simple tin cup, steaming and bitter. No note. No charge. No explanation.

I drank it anyway.

And now, the tracks stretch ahead — endless and gleaming — cutting through the prairie like a silver blade. We’ll arrive in Kansas soon. But something tells me the journey has only just begun.