A Red Anger in the Mountains.

The train from the coast to the city several hours distant, stops once at a small village high in the mountains.

Passengers rarely board or alight at the village and the only reason that the train still schedules a stop is because the station master had influential friends in the government. When they realise that he retired a year ago the station will probably close.

The locomotive that pulls the train leaves the coast at 7:23 a.m. and follows the rising sun before turning across the plains, it arrives in the mountains just after lunch so if you haven’t eaten on the train you will be hungry until the evening when the only shop/bar/restaurant opens. The small hostel however will make you a coffee, as long as you have a room booked for the night.

Jenny has a room booked for the night, but not being in a rush for a bed or caffeine she stands and watches the train pull out of the station as it heads to the first of many tunnels. She remains standing long after it has gone and the sound of the wheels and vibrating rails has stopped. She waits a little longer until she hears the feint whistle signalling that the train has reached the final tunnel and then she closes her eyes. And lets the silence of the empty station surround her.

The silence here is different from that of the coast where she woke early this morning, walking down to the ocean still bathed in moonlight; the soft pulse of the waves there is replaced by the soft babble of the streams that run alongside and under every path through the village, taking snow melt to the rivers far below. If she concentrates she can hear the waters voice singing to her through the silence of the station and the grey stone of the mountains that look down and watch her.

She feels as if time has stopped and that she could stand here forever and that nothing would ever change, and she would like it to be so. She is in no hurry to break the spell that is settling upon her and she leans her head back so that the sun can caress her face.

It feels good to be alive.

It feels good to be here in the mountains where the air is clear and pure: already she feels young again, younger than her forty odd years.

When she opens her eyes the mountains are startled by the intense electricity of her green eyes, even the emeralds hidden deep in the mines that the villages have tried in vain to find would be jealous. But no body mines any more, too disappointed by the dreams that failed to materialize, so the emeralds remain untroubled by the completion from her sparkling eyes.

She wonders if she should be wearing a hat, the sun is stronger here at altitude and she gathers her raven black hair into a bunch and clips it with a broach she takes from her pocket. The broach is decorated with coral from the ocean she has now left behind; her past will remain there and all the future will hold is in the small red suitcase at her feet. 

Red like her dress suit, red like her shoes and red like the anger that she is still carrying inside. 

This she was unable to leave in the sand this morning as the moon began to set, she can only hope that the spirituous air of the mountains will help her forget.