Just a small town girl
living in a lonely world

Cynthia's attempt at being inconspicuous, wearing her nondescript black jacket and tying her blond hair up in a knot, went unappreciated. She crept slowly onto the train with her bag clutched to her chest only to see that every seat in the boxcar was empty. She and the conductor were alone.

"It's almost midnight," the conductor said, reading her bewildered look. Then, "Aren't you a little young to be out on your own?"

She shook her head abruptly before dropping a fistful of change in the little box up front.

"Where are you going?"

"Anywhere."

She took the midnight train
going anywhere.

She tucked herself into a seat towards the back and idly played with the strap on her bag as she watched Sinnoh roll by.

Just a city boy
born and raised in south Detroit

She didn't even notice the train stop hours after; she was too busy interrogating herself on her own actions, and she wouldn't have if she hadn't heard a voice. The conductor asked, "What is it with you young folks on trains so late? On your own, too."

The boy he spoke to, definitely about as old as she was but with a face aged by graveness, silently dropped change into the bucket.

"Where are you headed, then?"

"It doesn't matter."

He took the midnight train
going anywhere.

He took a seat across from and then behind hers, as if unaware of her presence. He pulled a book out of his small, beaten-up briefcase. She swallowed her doubts and her nervousness and asked quietly, "What are you reading?"

He jumped in his seat and immediately closed the book and placed it in his lap, and then answered hesitantly, "It's about solar power."

"You're into science?"

"You could say that, yes."

"I could never understand most of it. I'm really impressed that you do." She kept her voice earnest. "My thing has always been ancient Sinnoh myths."

"Every myth has a grain of truth to it."

She paused. "My name is Cynthia."

"Cyrus."

"Pleasure to meet you."

"...You, too."

There was a silence and Cynthia filled it with the sound of shuffling as she quickly hopped into the seat behind her. "Where are you getting off?"

"Anywhere."

"I know a place," she said, and then realized how the words sounded. "I-I mean a café. Somewhere to just kill an evening, you know."

"Right." Cyrus nodded in a way that seemed more like he understood than he accepted.

"Are...are you interested?"

He was silent. And then he said quietly, "Okay."

A singer in a smoky room,
the smell of wine and cheap perfume.

"This is the classiest we can get while still being budgeted," Cynthia spoke about the little room they were in somewhere in Hearthome, her voice barely rising above that of the singer belting out sad country songs, her face hardly visible through the thick smoke. "I hope you don't have asthma or anything."

"No, it's fine."

"It really is a nice place. I mean, it would be if you could see past the smoke. It's usually not this bad."

"Right."

"So," said Cynthia, resting her head on her hands after pushing aside the menu and giving Cyrus a genuine smile. "You left where you came from, too?"

"Yes."

"So tell me about it. Tell me about you."

For a smile they can share the night,
it goes on and on and on and on.

Don't stop

believing