The sun was setting into the sea and bathed all of Fable with a beautiful cascade of orange and red. Sandy loved watching sunsets. But this one had a different meaning to her. Few things were as captivating to Sandy as the sunset, especially back at her old job. To her, it was a meaningful conclusion to her day outside of schedules. Her day was dictated by the trains back home like two bookends on a shelf. Everything between those two bookends was scheduled meticulously because they were tied to her paycheck, where even a single lapse could mean the end of everything she knew.
The sunset wasn’t a scheduled thing in Sandy’s life. It was something that lifted her out of schedules and let her see a bigger world. She could see the edge of the city from that rooftop and distant mountains that walled off distant people that could have been just like her or better. And Sandy always hoped they were better. Sandy’s mind swirled with what Kona had told her. Sandy spent every evening wishing she was somewhere else in the world as she looked out over the sunset. And the Escapade heard her.
Sandy wasn’t used to thinking this way about her life. It was easy for her to get lost in a book, but she always had a sobering disconnect between her world and the fiction’s she’d explore. There was nothing in her world that inspired the imagination. Kona’s story about a train that chooses its passengers was completely ludicrous… and yet here she was. Watching the sunset warmed Sandy’s soul and reassured her everything would be alright. If Kona was to be believed, if Sandy looked over the horizon again and longed to leave, the ticket would come. Sandy couldn’t imagine leaving yet. She couldn’t even remember a time she got to watch a sunset over a sparkling, beautiful ocean and was thankful Fable could give her that. Since she was staying, Sandy promised herself she’d come to this spot again as she walked back to Maxine’s.
The new café was tall enough that Sandy could see the steeple from outside of town. She was so enamored by the striking red wood of its new frame that she didn’t fully appreciate the feat of what she was looking at until she walked close enough to see a nearly finished bottom half of a building that completely wasn’t there before. Sandy stood in awe of Jill’s work in the middle of the street.