Chapter 2

The noise woke Grandma up.

She opened her eyes, took one look at the situation and immediately had opinions about it.

"What is all this so early in the morning?" She sat up, her voice still thick with sleep but already sharp enough to cut through the drama. Then she pointed directly at Grandpa. "And you. Stop crying. She is not going to some other house. She is not getting married. She is going to college."

Grandpa wiped his face. He did not fully stop crying but he did it more quietly after that.

Sia laughed and slipped out of the room before anyone could pull her back into another hug.

The rest of the house was already moving. Her parents had been up before everyone, quietly arranging her luggage in the corridor, carrying bags out one by one so nothing would be rushed at the last moment. Sia got herself ready, splashed water on her face, looked at herself in the mirror for a second longer than usual. Then she went to get dressed.

When it was time to leave, she went to each of them.

Her elders. One by one. She touched their feet, took their blessings, let their hands rest on her head for a moment. These were the hands that had held her whole life. She felt that, quietly, in her chest, even as she smiled.

Grandpa was crying like a baby by the door.

Grandma was trying very hard not to and failing at it.

Sia felt something rise in her throat. She swallowed it down, gave them one last look, and got in the car.

She didn't look back. She couldn't.

The station was its usual self. Loud and rushing and smelling like chai and iron. Her grandfather had booked 3AC tickets for her and her parents and when they found their compartment and settled in, Sia looked around at it properly for the first time.

It was her first time in 3AC.

It was nice. Clean. Cool from the air conditioning that hummed steadily above them. The seats were proper, the curtains were drawn, everything felt organised and contained.

But it was different.

Different from the regular compartments she had grown up taking on shorter trips. Those had open windows where the wind came in and hit your face and messed up your hair and you didn't mind at all. Vendors would come through every few minutes, chai, samosas, magazines, someone always calling out something. There was noise and movement and life passing through constantly.

Here it was quieter. Sealed. Nobody came to sell anything.

It was a whole new experience and Sia wasn't sure yet if she liked it or just found it interesting.

Seventeen hours. That's how long the journey was.

She settled into her seat and turned to the window. Outside, slowly, her hometown began to move. The familiar streets, the buildings she had seen her whole life, the sky she had grown up under. All of it sliding away, getting smaller, fading into the distance as the train picked up speed.

She watched it go.

And somewhere underneath the ache of leaving, there was something else. Something quieter. Hope, maybe. Excitement. The feeling of a page turning.

She didn't have words for it yet. But she felt it, sitting there with her face turned toward the window, watching her whole world shrink into the horizon while something new, unnamed and waiting, rushed toward her.

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