When the train finally left the last lit stop, the windows became black mirrors and the passengers drew into themselves like the way animals curl when storm is expected. The conductor announced a delay. Outside, wind picked up and pushed the train like a hand guiding a reluctant animal along its track. Rain, now full and sure, stitched the night into metallic threads.
And somewhere, the professor listened—whether in the marrow of a battered cassette or in the pattern of copper in an oblong shard—and laughed a laugh like gravel and wind. midv279 new