Embarkation is not only the act of boarding but the long, patient weaving of attention. We are a quilt stitched from brief contacts—the nod, the offered seat, the shared silence when the train dives through a tunnel. In the dark, lights become fireflies in a jar; conversations flatten to rhythms that match the wheels. I purr to myself, an engine within an engine.
Inside, compartments hum with lives stacked like sunbeams. I choose one that smells of rain and a distant piano. A window is a bright fish; I press my nose to the glass and leave a foggy comet. Nearby, a human folds themselves the way a blanket folds—a deliberate, patient creature. They offer a biscuit; I decline with a dignified flick of ear. Pride is a warm patch on a radiator. Meet Train - Embarkation -v1.0.0- -Cat Language-
At each stop, doors open like lungs. Strangers arrive, strangers depart. With each exchange the carriage accumulates small treasures: a lost glove that smells of lavender, a ticket stub scribbled with a joke, a map of imagined constellations. I collect these with my glance, tucking them into the soft cathedral of memory. My paws find the strap above me; I loop a talon and hold on like a secret. Embarkation is not only the act of boarding
The carriage is a small city. Lamps hang like moons. A conductor-cat moves in precise arcs, tail aloft, stamping paws with a brass click. He speaks in clipped syllables; I understand the intent: move, settle, observe. A kitten duo tumble in with cardboard kingdoms and declarations of imminent conquest. An old cat with a collar of braided yarn tells me the route—Meet Train, last stop: Convergence—by tapping three times on the window with a cane. Each tap is a map point, each pause a promise. I purr to myself, an engine within an engine
I tail the crowd, carrying one small thing: a stub of a ticket with a smudge of ink that reads—if you tilt it just right—Meet. Stay. Go. My whiskers decide it means all three.
We glide. Tracks sing beneath us—rhythmic claws combing earth. The view is gone and found in breaths: orchard scents, the metallic tang of the river, a dog barking at an uncatchable horizon. I study fellow passengers the way I study birds: names imagined by fur, gait, and the careful crinkle at the corners of eyes. There is a pair who share a thermos like a single warm sun; a child who hums an unfinished tune; a woman whose pockets are lined with folded letters—paper mice.