plethoraofprose
There's a young man on a bus. He looks to be in his early twenties, a guitar case in his hand, a messenger bag slung over one shoulder, and he's alone.
Five people wait at five bus stops between Dulce, South Dakota and Hiraeth.
There's a boy of the same age in northern Nebraska. His things were sent ahead. All he carries aside from a backpack is a small black case, and in it are the drumsticks he used in his audition for the university. No way will he leave those behind.
Caught in the fumes and dirt and people, a girl of nineteen spends her second night in a station in Colorado. There's a toy keyboard next to her, something she's been playing with since she sent her real one to Cali. She can't risk missing this bus - she worked too long and too hard to get a scholarship to Hiraeth and not make it there in time. So she curls up on a metal bench and waits.
A third boy is alone in Utah, thinking of everything he's leaving behind for a music career. But he's had enough of playing bass in a coffee shop band for three years, since the age of sixteen. His girlfriend said she'd text him, but they both know it was over when he drove out of Raspa in his mom's car. But he couldn't turn down a full scholarship.
There's a second girl with nothing in her hands but a notebook, filled with half-finished songs and different ways to sing them. She'll miss Nevada, but for almost all twenty-one years of her life, she's dreamed of California. Hiraeth pennants and brochures could be found in her room since she started junior high. She only hopes she can afford to stay, after all the vocal training it took to get in.
The last boy, fresh out of high school, waits empty handed in Juneau, California. He's so close to the college it's almost embarrassing that he has to take the bus. To any onlooker, he doesn't look like he's going anywhere special. But the university has accepted a second great vocalist this year.
All he has to do is catch the three o' clock bus to Hiraeth.