The Last Train to Aurora
The station was almost empty, save for a few flickering lamps and the soft echo of
footsteps. Mara clutched her ticket tightly, her breath visible in the midnight air. She
had been told the last train to Aurora only came once every hundred years, and
those who boarded never returned the same.
The whistle pierced the silence. Out of the fog, an iron train emerged—black as
night, its windows glowing faintly with golden light. The doors opened with a sigh,
as though the train itself had been waiting.
“Boarding?” asked the conductor, a tall man in a long coat, his face hidden beneath
a cap.
Mara hesitated, but nodded. “Yes.”
The interior was unlike any train she had ever seen. Velvet seats stretched across
the cars, chandeliers swayed gently above, and passengers sat quietly, their faces
both familiar and strange. One woman looked like Mara’s grandmother, though
decades younger. Another man bore the same crooked smile as her childhood friend
who had moved away long ago.
“Who are they?” Mara whispered.
The conductor appeared at her side. “They are fragments of your past, pieces you
have forgotten—or tried to.”
The train lurched forward, carrying them through tunnels of starlight. Outside the
windows, Mara saw flashes of memory: her first day at school, the moment she
learned to ride a bicycle, the time she stayed up all night talking with her best
friend. Some moments made her smile; others tightened her chest with regret.
“Why am I here?” she asked.
The conductor’s eyes glinted. “Aurora is not a place. It is a choice. At the end of this
journey, you must decide: to live burdened by the past, or to let it go.”
The train slowed. Ahead, the tunnel opened into a brilliant expanse of light—so
bright it seemed to call her forward. The passengers rose one by one, walking
calmly into the glow, dissolving like mist. Mara clutched her ticket.
Her grandmother—alive and warm as she remembered—smiled at her. “It’s all right,
darling. We live on in you.”
Tears welled in Mara’s eyes. She thought of the grief she had carried for years, the
mistakes she replayed at night, the words she wished she had spoken but never did.
All of them stood before her, offering quiet forgiveness.
The conductor bowed. “It is time.”
Mara stepped to the threshold. For the first time in years, her heart felt light. She let
the silver ticket slip from her fingers and walked into the glow.
When she opened her eyes, she was back at the station. The fog had lifted, the air
was crisp, and dawn painted the sky in shades of pink and gold. The train was gone.
But something was different. Her chest no longer ached. The weight she had carried
was gone. She took a deep breath, and for the first time in a long while, she was
ready to live.
The last train to Aurora had given her not escape—but freedom.
