CHAPTER ONE: TURBULENCE
The tracks were sizzling hot under the unrelenting, ever-bright Ivorian sun. Thomas strived on, battling a sweat as he huffed and panted — though he was not towing anything, resisting the sweet rapture of heat stroke was something his slender, metal frame was struggling to do with any grace.
"Where were we?" he muttered to himself, disoriented. "Where are they?"
His eyes strayed from the tracks for a moment (though the need to keep his eyes on them was alleviated somewhat by the creeping pace he was maintaining) and stared upon a cliff face. There, he saw the number.
"That is when, but what is why?" he queried. When the cliff face did not respond, Thomas fell to his knees. "I am not ready," he begged. "The solitude of then cannot come now!"
And as he uttered these words, he was no longer on the Ivory Coast. He was back on the Island of Sodom Sodor.