Prologue
There's a map mounted on a wall just five meters behind her, but she's never felt more lost in her few short years. All that's left of the life of Clem Thiele has been packed into a carpet bag and an ancient, tan valise.
A train pulls up; route 16. This route is the one that would take her back home to a red brick house in the suburbs. She doesn't board. Her plan is fairly simple:
Catch a train to nowhere
Repeat step one until she is completely and utterly out of reach of anyone who knew her.
What was that quote? Not all who wander are lost. Well, she, for one, is.
Naturally, it has started to drizzle. It was a dark and stormy afternoon… Commuters waiting for their trains hurry to find shelter under the tin roof of the station. With an audible sigh, she heaves herself to her feet and shuffles to shelter too. She sets her luggage on a vacant bench, rifles through her carpet bag in search of her umbrella. No luck; she must have forgotten to pack it in her haste to leave. She'll just have to wait it out.
To her dismay, the rain just gets heavier. The grey-ish clouds congregating above her promise a storm in the near future, perhaps even a blizzard.
Curse her and her rotten luck. She'll be stuck here for eons before the rain passes, it appears. She wants to put as much distance between her and London as possible, but any soul venturing out in this abysmal weather would soon catch their death.
So she sits herself down on the bench next to her luggage, and fiddles and fidgets and gets increasingly more irritable.
And purses her lips, and waits.
And taps her lace-up boots on the cracked concrete floor, and waits some more.
She tugs her slightly-wavy locks from their hastily fashioned ponytail and instead secures them in a loose braid – quite a good one, when taking into consideration that she forgot to pack her hairbrush as well. God, what didn't she forget?
She has her phone, she recalls, at least. She roots around for it in the depths of her bag, quickly locating it.
Two voicemail messages:
"Clementine, its Mum. Where are-"
Delete.
"Clem, it's me. Are you okay? Please call back; I'm really worried about you, and I know your mother's practically tearing her hair out. Don't you dare delete th-"
Delete.
She also has about ten text messages, but she doesn't bother to check any of them.
Another frustrated groan escapes. She knows they mean well, but right now, she doesn't want anything to do with her various friends and relatives and their intrusive 'are you okay' questions.
She lies back on the hard, gum-riddled bench, trying not to think about how dirty it is likely to be, and props her bag under her head. It proves itself a poor excuse for a makeshift pillow. She hadn't caught a wink of sleep the evening before, and there are still a few hours to wait until her train is due to arrive, so she might as well make the most of them.
Someone's damp, discarded magazine has been left on the ground next to her. She picks it up, and as she lays there, she absentmindedly traces her fingers over the watery ink, swirling and blending with no rhyme or reason. The ink bleeds across the paper, creating murky watercolour teardrops that run down her calloused hands.
She eventually sinks into a dreamless, deep slumber. Despite the less-than-ideal setting, it's the best sleep she's had in weeks.
A/N: All will be revealed soon... Also, any suggestions for some more character names are most welcome, as I'm a little stuck ;)