Dreamscapes: First Time Train Home
Sometimes when I hear about a place or I’m extremely excited to go somewhere I’ve never been before, I dream of that place. The dream rarely gets the actual place right, but it’s my brain’s interpretation of how things might go or look. I’ve dreamt of field trips, plane rides (despite how much I hate them), and even my early days at university.
The dreams make up the location and the context simply based around what I’ve already experienced alongside what context clues I’ve been given. I once went to a place that was one large Victorian and pre-Victorian era recreation. I imagined it to have large barns, wide rivers and lakes, and some uninterrupted access to animals and foreign trees. It had some similarities, but my dreams were ultimately wrong.
This dream is slightly like that. A dream representation of what I imagine of the largest train station in the entirety of Terris’ Western-most continent, Flyrendt: the Grand Central Station. I call this dream: “First Time Train Home”.
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I am going to Grand Central Station. The station is situated on a separate plot of land from the rest of what looks like an idle downtown Yonindale. It’s extremely large and antique-looking, with faded off-white concrete pillars and reliefs holding up its outer walls. A giant clock motif stands out at the very front of the station.
The main entrance to the station can’t get me to the underground subway quick enough, so I take a side tunnel down across the street from the main building itself. I get directly to the platform I need to be and immediately miss a train. I shrug it off. I am still a bit nervous because I’ve never made this journey before and even though I have an idea of where I’m going, it still gives me shivers.
I look down the platform and notice just how long it is. A generic grey concrete platform with pillars in its centre and no yellow line. There are two other trains also accessible through the platform.
One train is running perpendicular to my train and is all the way at the other side of the platform. I watch as the train arrives, picks up its passengers, and leaves swiftly. The other train wraps itself around our platform, running over and under like a rollercoaster. As it rushes by, the people in the train have their hands in the air. There’s a tunnel that leads to the rollercoaster train’s platform and a food court.
I take my map out to kill time waiting for the train. My map is a deep magenta. I know my route is far northeast of where I am right now, but the map’s colour against the black of the text makes the actual station name illegible in the moment.
I put the map away as I get a strong urge to explore and hop on another train. The urge wants to take me to experience new things and feel the air in a different part of Qikamda. It wants me to look at the tall and small buildings of different cities and watch the streetcars fly around as they travel along the streets.
I push the urge aside and take out my headphones. I try to listen to some music, but it muddles in the sounds of the nearby trains rushing in and out of the platform, so the music is unrecognisable yet enjoyable.
Some of my school friends arrive. My mood is both enlightened and dulled. Part of me wanted to ride the train by myself with only my music to accompany me, but part of me also liked the company to come with me. They begin to play and have fun along the length of the platform from the entrance to the tunnel leading to the food court. I try to stay away from their antics as they bother people.
The train arrives at the station and it initially seems packed. I frown at the heavy crowds. Thankfully for me, the train quickly empties as my friend and I head to the back-most train car. I wait for a human with long wavy blonde hair, a white shirt and a jean jacket carrying a suitcase to come off before I rush in as the doors close.
My friend and I sit beside each other. There is a group of boys I know from school sitting at the very back of the train, along a row of seats lining the back of the car. They’re all sun elves, with their dark skin and hair, talking loudly and playing around. They’re loud enough that I can hear them over my music.
A ticket checker comes around. He’s distinct due to his black suede sweater. As we look down the car, we see the man giving other passengers a hard time about their tickets, even yelling at them. Even with my ticket secure in my pocket, I feel my breath hitching as I see the man walking towards me.
He walks right by my friend and I, turning his attention to the boys at the back. He asks for their tickets and my friend and I turn to one another. They don’t.
The dream ends before I can see what happens to the boys, but I thought of it as an interesting dream. To be honest, it’s one of my three dreams in a short span about the Grand Central Station, despite nothing happening and despite me never having been there. The other two are very similar, with me waiting for a train on a subway platform.
Sometimes that happens; where I keep dreaming of a place that I’ve never been to. Most of the time too, I dream of the dream-interpretation place more than the actual place. I find it a little bit funny.
I suppose that sometimes excitement and imagination rule our brains. They say dreams serve many different purposes. I guess one such purpose is to live out our excitement without needing to express it aloud. Or as an addition to the already expressed excitement.
I like the latter. It’s nice to be loud when you’re excited rather than anxious and quiet.
— Heleza
