Solitary Blue

ACT I

ACT I
POV - Stray (Conan Hawthorne)

The station is painfully quiet and gray; the atmosphere puts him on edge. That's all Stray has been thinking about for the past few days sitting here, in this cramped corner of the station. It's been ten days since he got out of school, ten days of ignoring the worry churning in his gut and bypassing the prying questions of loitering police officers.

Stray knows that technically what he's doing is not legal but he refuses to go back to school. His patience and determination are both starting to crumble away, it's hot and humid. He hasn't bathed since the day he got here; the feeling of being caked in sweat and grim feels disgusting. His hair is probably a tangled misshapen mess by now. Marigold would probably be disgruntled by the whole situation and throw some snarky comment in his face.

Stray is getting tired of waiting for his father, he just wants to go home. He's been here for far too long waiting for his father to come and whisk him away from this damned train station.

Stray knows that technically he isn't supposed to be out here, that technically there's a law put into place to avoid the exact situation he's in right now, but that law would be his death so instead Stray would rather wait.

And wait he does. While he waits all he can do is sit and watch the few people around walk around in hurried steps silently, all while tucked away in his small corner of the station where not a lot of people stopped by.

His dad and Stray's little corner, the dog zone as his father put it. This was the usual spot his father and he sat at to wait for their train or the instructed zone for him to go so that he could weave through the crowd to find Stray more easily.

Stray sits and sits, waits and waits, and watches. Cold and glum he watches as grief-stricken Families broken by loss move about in quickened strides. The streets are starting to get packed which means all the public schools are probably going to be dismissing for the final time today.

The streets were packed but not in the good way that he remembered. There's no hustle and bustle or crowds of chattering people laughing and smiling, instead, Everyone is quiet.... Just plain quiet and meek almost as if they're trying to keep the peace between themselves and death.

Well not everyone is quite....

Stray's eyes zone in on the startlingly loud cry that erupts from a couple of children. A group of four kids probably siblings from the looks of it just about a block away from him. He assumes their perhaps newly orphaned children based solely just on the way they collapsed on the ground crying. A man in a suit, crisp and clean looking, looms over them with a paper in his hand and a grimace on his face.

There's no mistaking it then, that's a worker from the government. Then that means those kids are no doubt newly orphaned. The government usually hands out money and letters to family members of the deceased, never the remains, just the money and a letter. Stray supposes that money will probably be more useful in the long run to a grieving family than a rotting corpse. Sentimental value aside of course.

A loud cry snaps him out of his thoughts.

One of those kids ...umm... well orphans now technically Stray corrects himself, just starts to cry after hearing the news. Their whole bodies shivering and convulsing as if having a seizure. The rest followed quickly after, well all except one of the kids. The only kid not crying just stands there straight and still with their whole body rigid and a foolish expression, as if too stunned to do anything else.

Stray wants to sympathize but he just can't, that one boy just looks... so ridiculous! As a matter of fact, all those kids do. Stray wonders, if they see how ridiculous they look falling to the ground crying or standing in the middle of the street, shell-shocked in the case of that one weirdo. He notices that the government worker has already left the premises leaving the kids to sort out what comes next. Sneaky bastard.