Story Excerpt - Beautiful Wilderness, Chapter 1

Screeching brakes sounded all along the seven-carriage train. Jane grimaced at the mind-aching noise while being jostled forward as the train came to a halt. Nearly dropping the book in her hands. Another stop, another delay. Another city she had no desire to learn the name of. Had she been in a better state of mind, she would have loved to explore the places she had long read about in her books, but this was no long-awaited journey. She was stuck on this train and it smelled awful. Like someone had taken rotting food and stuffed it into every nook and cranny of the blisteringly uncomfortable seats.

Jane let out a small cough. Crumpling her kerchief within her gloved hand as she brought it to her rosy lips. Another layer of dust blew into the stuffy train car when the uncouth man sitting across from her opened the window and shouted at someone he saw before rushing down the aisle. She didn't understand the words he had said. He was speaking in some foreign language that she hadn't run into before. Russian. She heard someone gossip several seats behind her. What an odd language. French was easily recognizable for her with its romantic beauty flowing from the speaker's tongue. German was also familiar since her father had had dealings with many people who had emigrated from that part of the world. But this Russian just sounded like a garbled mess. Jane swiftly shut the window. The window quieted the noisy stop outside, but it was still a headache trying to refocus on her book. The cover was worn, but it provided a small amount of levity in this clamorous place. Back in New England, her father had a beautiful room filled with books, and best of all silence, that is, when he wasn't in the room of course.

She looked up. Many passengers were leaving at this stop, but annoyingly more passengers entered the train than exited. Giving the relief that this stuffy carriage would be mostly empty during the next stretch of her journey a short-lived life.