Undefined - The Zephyr Book 1 ? (completed)(#Wattys2016)

Chapter 5 - Cello

5 - Cello

In Lebrix, I have to change trains, but not before I do something I had waited to do for years – eat a Lebrix banana. When I was eight and my dad was still around, we had gone on a family trip – the only family trip I could remember. We had taken the train from Aafta to Easrig and then from Easrig to Lebrix like I did today. It had been the farthest I had come from home and was also the first time I laid eyes on the Sand Sea.

I always found the story of the Sand Sea far-fetched, how could an entire ocean vanish in one day? Even though my grandfather had shown me newspaper clippings from back then, had told me how the trains to Lebrix were packed with people who came to see the impossible sight. I only came to believe it when I saw it with my own eyes.

There are still some warehouses and abandoned docks on the edge of the city where the desert begins. Stranger yet are the long tracks of the Waterface Train, still standing perfectly erect, waiting to send anyone who wishes into the horizon. The Waterface Train went out of business because the Sand Sea is impossible to cross even with today's technology. Businesses were severed as well as families and the Eastern continent that lies beyond the desert is said to be in great chaos. It's unclear to me why Meda supported the idea that the world starts and ends with the Western continent, but it's so easy to forget that there ever was an East.

There are fruit stalls all over the train station, I stop at one and buy a bunch of blue Lebrix bananas, a few yellow pears and a bag of roasted chestnuts. Peeling the banana, I make my way to the platform and as I wait for the train to show up, I watch the sand and eat.

The Lebrix banana is just as I remembered it to be, soft and moist with a refreshing sour taste at first that expands into blissful sweetness. They're smaller than the yellow bananas that my mother buys in Aafta, and except for the general shape, there's no resemblance. I consume three before the train arrives, but no matter how many I eat, I will never have enough of that heavenly taste.

Back then, when I was eight, I had been happily ignorant of what sort of man my father was. It's not that I thought my father was any kind of hero. He had been gone on long unexplained absences leaving my mother in tears. But I was so determined to get his approval I was willing to overlook everything else.

To anyone's eyes we were a happy family that day in Lebrix, enjoying a family trip. It was my fondest memory because my parents smiled at each other as if they finally understood one another.

They had.

After zigzagging through the stalls of the spring fair, touring through the Sand Sea Museum and eating ice cream in the famous Orbrazo's Candy Shoppe, we visited the Lebrix Court, a big beautiful building made out of marble. That was the only part of the day that had been annoying and boring. My mom pushed me into the tour for little kids so that she and my father could go off somewhere. I was furious at them, especially since the main attraction of the tour wasn't the 700 year old Court building, or the paintings of stern-looking ladies in stiff robes and wigs, nor the lovely figurines of judges we received at the end. The only thing that the other kids cared about was meeting a Jewel and his pet Alprine.

It was no surprise that I had very few friends while growing up; until this very day I find unmasked curiosity a threat. Maybe that's why I couldn't stand Fellin. His widely honest face and all that talk about where we were going made my defence mechanisms jump into action.

Years later I realised that my fondest memory of my parents was also my last. They had chosen Lebrix Court to finalise the divorce because it was fastest place to do it and while a group of kids had been gawking at me -- my parents had signed the papers.