Harold Dinkley was the sort of man who carried a suitcase even when he wasn’t going anywhere. He said it was for “preparedness,” though inside the case was nothing but a single half-eaten croissant and an expired ticket to somewhere rather ambiguously called Elsewhere.
One morning, Harold awoke to find a train station had appeared in his backyard. He lived alone, so there was no one to tell him this was odd.
The sign read: “Next Arrival: You.”
He blinked once, twice. The station was quaint. Too quaint. The kind of place where tea was served in bone china and time passed in little sighs instead of ticks.
The train, when it arrived, wasn’t loud or showy. It sighed to a stop and opened its doors with the weariness of an old librarian. Harold, naturally, boarded.
Inside, he met others. All sorts of folks. A painter who had just finished his masterpiece. A scientist who’d cracked something huge. A baker whose sourdough had finally risen just right. They all wore a similar expression: dazed satisfaction.
“I’ve arrived,” they each whispered, like it was a password to paradise.
The train whisked them through golden fields of contentment, past lakes of glowing recognition. Everything shimmered with “finally.” For a while, Harold floated in that beautiful haze of arrival. It was lovely. But like all honeymoons, the enchantment began to itch.
It started when the painter dropped his brush. The scientist’s theorem unraveled slightly at the edges. The baker began to doubt her ratios.
Harold found himself clutching his croissant-less suitcase a little tighter.
One by one, the passengers began to shift in their seats. Some looked out the window longingly. Others started pacing.
Then, the announcement came:
“Next Departure: Now.”
The train didn’t stop. It simply opened the opposite doors, and suddenly, there were paths—trails, bridges, tunnels—leading in every direction. And every passenger stepped out, not back to where they’d come from, but onward to something new.
Harold hesitated. He had only just arrived, hadn’t he?
A porter (who looked suspiciously like a slightly younger version of himself) tapped his shoulder gently.
“Can’t stay in Arrival forever,” he said. “The view gets boring.”
So Harold stepped off. The moment his foot touched the new path, his suitcase filled—this time with a notebook, a paintbrush, and a cinnamon bun. Better than the croissant, frankly.
He didn’t know where he was going. But he didn’t need to. He understood now: arrival is never the end. It’s just a cozy bench on the way to somewhere else.
🌙 Moral of the Story:
You’ll arrive. And it will feel like the whole sky is applauding. But don’t cling, love. The train moves on. The magic is in the motion.
✨ Next: The Tower of Almosts
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