2025-12-03 Freewrite

Along the tracks was a small canal with stones and little else. The tracks themselves were the old Soviet types, rusted over but technically functional. The Russians hadn’t kept these up since they finished the way to Murmansk nor did they mind who rode between the shoddy cars of wheat going out from Volga.

The gravel made a strange texture in the moonlight. Bicolored and textural and grainy as if shot on old film. The boys eyes glazed over as he watched them unable to focus on any individual stone but seeing the blur alone against a blue-black horizon. He could sleep for a moment until they hit the yard and he would be gone.

Whose land they were arriving in he could not know. He could not read the signs but more importantly the signs meant nothing to anyone anymore. The train would stop at the station and people would charge in against men in rifles. Those with textiles or fresh meat or bullets to sell were fortunate and could haul as much as they could carry in their arms or with their own wagon and the others may watch or else try their hand at swiping what little they could. After the collapse though there was little to be done. Some would end up next to the boy and go themselves on their way away from that damned place.

And damned were many places in those days. His own home was gone or at least he had heard as much. In its place would grow nothing.