Okay, so I'm playing this like Flora and Luke are both seventeen (though Flora is a few months older). Hope it's okay!
The Professor and I stepped off of the Walden Express with our luggage. I craned my neck to see if I could find Luke in the crowd, but to no avail. There was a surprising amount of people in the station for such a small town. The last time I came here, over two years ago, there were no crowds. But, now that I thought about it, there had only been about five other groups of passengers heading to Runsdry that day. Now there were well over twenty.
Well. Anyway. I haven't seen Luke in two and a half years and instead I'm thinking about the crowd. He did come to London to visit Professor Layton a few months ago, but I was in France, studying the Ruins of Gran Barrugh. I was only back for a week before we got Luke's letter telling us to come here. Well, not us, specifically:
Dear Professor,
I am sorry for the lack of time and details, but I really need you to come to Runsdry as soon as you can. There is a problem and only the great Professor Layton can solve it. I will be able to tell you more in person, but I'm afraid that I can't enclose any more information is this letter. It's not safe.
Luke
P.S: DO NOT bring Flora. No matter what. Hopefully she is still in France for a bit longer…. Please.
I was quite outraged when I read this. Of course I would go! I thought we had settled this nonsense of leaving me behind four years ago!
Yesterday
"I've got the mail, Professor," I called, kicking the door shut behind me. My hands were quite full of jumbled papers, textbooks, and envelopes. I made my way to the study, trying not to drop something, and nudged the door open with my hip. The Professor was staring out the window with that look on his face. The one he sometimes wore when he was pondering something difficult. "Professor?"
He turned from the window and forced his expression into a smile. I could always tell when he was faking. "What do we have today, Flora?" he asked as I dropped my load onto his desk.
"Captain Octavian and his crew," I said. Every day I spent the morning in the library and picked a topic to research. In the afternoon, I brought all the files and books I'd dug up on the subject home and looked through them. Whether or not the professor helped me depended on his classes and his own work.
"Interesting," he said, giving me a funny look. What was that about? "And the mail?" he asked.
"Right here." I pulled the letters from my research and began leafing through them. It seemed that there were several academic queries for the professor, a follow-up on the Gran Barrugh ruins for me, and—"There's one from Luke!" I opened this letter right away. He and I wrote each other at least four times—often more—every month and I always looked forward to his letters. I hadn't gotten any in the past two weeks, though.
I read through the letter, growing more and more agitated as I drew closer to the end. I didn't like having so few details. By the postscript, I was positively furious. Of course, I wasn't one to yell. I just got really quiet and frozen on the inside. I handed the letter to the professor. He scanned it quickly. When he looked up, I said, "I'm coming."
"Oh, I have no doubt about that, Flora, dear," he replied, looking back at the letter, his brow furrowed. "I only worry about what Luke has gotten himself into."
We bought the first train tickets we could find and sent ahead to tell Luke of our arrival.
This Morning
"Do you have everything, Flora," the Professor asked from my door.
I was kneeling in front of my suitcase, trying to squeeze everything in. "Almost," I said over my shoulder. I had spent the rest of yesterday at the library finding information on the Runsdry area and was trying to fit it all in my undersized luggage. A strand of brown hair fell into my eyes as I stuffed the last of it in. I blew it out of my face and zipped the suitcase shut. I'd only packed one outfit besides the one I was currently wearing. None of the rest would fit.
"All done," I smiled and stood up, brushing off the knees of my pink dress. I turned around to face my adoptive father and said, "I'm ready to go."
Now
"I think I see him," the Professor said, and started forward through the crowd.
I followed, still craning my neck and asking, "Where?"
"He's straight ahead, Flora." The Professor continued walking. "See? Right by the information booth." I could see nothing but the Professor's hat over the crowd. He was pulling ahead of me. I tried to keep my eyes on the hat, but I lost it, so instead I looked for the information booth. That, too was invisible to me. In this surging, rolling cloud of people, how was it possible for anyone to find anything? I don't like crowds. I never have. I don't have much experience with them from when I was little, but the first time I saw the streets of London I knew I didn't like them. I felt lost, powerless in a large crowd. I began to feel as if the world closed in on me in the crowd. My stomach dropped out. I couldn't move. My breathing got faster as I stared at the roiling, loud mass around me. I was overwhelmed.
Something jerked on my elbow and pulled me through the people and to some open space that had eluded me before. I gasped and slowly regained my breath, then looked up at the stranger who had pulled me from the crowd, only to realize that it wasn't a stranger at all.
"Hello, Flora," Luke said. He raised an eyebrow at the professor over my shoulder. "A true gentleman doesn't leave a lady alone in a crowd."
And now, a puzzle (I know it's not that good):
Had Flora asked directions in the crowd, these are the replies that she would have gotten:
"The information booth? Oh, it's right next to the entrance gate."
"Well, it's certainly not beside the train terminal!"
"It's on the left of the exit gate."
"The gates are right next to each other."
So, is the information booth on the far left, inner left, inner right, or far right?
Post your answer as a review! (Yes, this is a way to get reviews. Please? It's my first story.)