With her father's memory failing and her mother gone, Soraya Thenayu enrolls in distant Darkwood Academy and immediately becomes enemies with the richest kid at school. Between hiding her father's gift of illegally harvested magic, befriending socia...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Soraya took in a deep breath and stepped forward, joining the short line of people heading towards Matumi. Within a few short seconds, she would be boarding the train, leaving her home of Rivinsdeep and the Averlore Mountains behind and heading off to live in a town she had never seen before on the other side of her country. Her thin fingers nervously clutched both straps of her backpack as she watched the Etherians ahead of her climb aboard the train.
"Ticket, please."
The girl flung it forward, and the conductor gave it a dark blue stamp. Soraya hastily stuffed it back into her coat pocket before hoisting herself up into the train along with her suitcase. Only after she was in the hallway did she take her ticket back out to look at it.
The stamp was a silhouetted outline of their country's crest of a gremowlkin in flight. The girl was impressed with how sleek and professional the design looked. Near the top of the ticket was the train's name: The Rivingale Express.
"Did you need help finding your seat, miss?"
One of the train attendants studied her with bright blue eyes. The woman was wearing a long, dark navy blue coat with golden buttons, similar to the Booking Clerk's inside the train station. She had light skin, with even lighter patches spotting on her face and hands, reminding Soraya of Mrs. Bunion at the bakery back in Rivinsdeep. The train attendant's golden hair was tied into a long braid on the back of her head, and she had a name tag pinned to her coat that read, Olivia.
"Yes, please," Soraya held up the ticket towards her.
Together, they walked down the long, narrow corridor of the passenger train. A row of three navy blue cushioned seats faced the back of the train, followed by a decent amount of dark blue carpeted floor, before another row of three seats were placed pointing towards the front. Each section had a large, rounded, rectangular window for all the passengers to look out of.
Some Etherians they passed by stared out their windows, while others read magazines and novels. Some had even reclined their seats and were snoozing away under blankets. The majority of the Azakuin passengers had blue eyes, though some of them had green and brown eyes. There were a lot of empty seats that they passed by, and the girl wondered why that was.
Soraya was disappointed that there were no other passengers aboard the train that looked close to her age, but then reminded herself that she would soon be at a huge school with lots of other children, and became excited again.
"Here we are."
Olivia gestured towards a seat on their left. It was one facing the back of the train rather than the front, and was closest to a window. There was only one other person seated in her section, and she was sitting across from Soraya. The upper half of the body was hiding behind a large black and white newspaper. The girl assumed it was a woman simply because of their long black dress that went all the way down to their feet.
