✏️ Under One Roof

11. Eleven Tracks

Three out of the eleven tracks had already played before she realised that she didn't know where she was, and paused the music so that she could pay attention to her surroundings again. There were houses here, but they looked a lot older than the ones she had seen in this part of the country before. She walked between the railway and what seemed to be a lot of back walls, with windows just a little over her head. Between the houses, there were wooden fences that probably enclosed somebody's garden. And then a little farther along, the path opened out into a courtyard, with cobbled paths leading off in several directions. These houses looked a lot older than Tegan; maybe the original core of Morganston, a village that had existed long before its outskirts were colonised by budget housing for desperate commuters. But the thing that got her attention today was a flight of steps leading up to a wood-beamed building ahead of her. It looked almost like some kind of church, until she got closer and saw the timetables displayed in glass cases all around the outside walls. Morganston had a station?

She couldn't believe she'd missed that before. But it was a rural building, maybe adapted from a structure that had been here before the railway came. It was easy to imagine that nobody knew it was here unless they lived really close to it; it was probably so small that she would have to zoom in on a really small area to see it on the map. Still, she knew it was there now, and that would probably make it a whole lot easier to get to Moistville once she started studying there.

She hesitated, her thoughts darting off in different directions for a moment. She was assuming that she would get accepted on the course she wanted, and she didn't want to think like that because she knew how it would make her feel if she was rejected. But it was hard not to look forward to it now, and she really felt like she had a chance after the interview.

Trying to restore the positive mood she'd had moments before, she ascended the stairs to the station. There was a ticket machine on the platform; beside architecture which suggested that the building had once housed a ticket office, although perhaps some local business was using it for storage now. There was also a sign indicating that the platform in the opposite direction was accessible by a different set of stairs, on the other side of a bridge. Trains went to Ashfields on this side; and to Mercer and Moistville on the other. Tegan made a note of that, and then looked at the train times. Not every train along the line stopped here, which was no surprise, but there were enough that she was confident she could get to university.

Now, she didn't know what to do next. She could have continued looking around Morganston – she could see a small shopping street, the kind that would have had all the necessary amenities for a small village before all the new housing developments were added – but she wasn't really inclined to do that. It was hard to think about what was most important, or what she really wanted to do right now. So she sat down on one of the wooden benches on the platform, and decided to collect her thoughts while there was no one else around.

There were several things Tegan needed to think about now, and she was making progress on all of them. She had applied to Moistville, and was quietly confident. She had learned a little about Franklin's Muse; and now she knew that all of the band members had gone on to build successful showbiz careers, she was sure there would be a collector willing to invest in their old instruments. That was even if she wanted to sell the drumkit, and that decision was far from final yet. And the third question that had been nagging at her was avoiding bullying in her own home. She hadn't actually managed to show Ness not to mess with her; but she was confident she would get there soon. She knew that she would just have to double down on humiliating him, as soon as there was even the slightest hint that his personality problems were coming back.

For now, though, she didn't think that she needed to do anything. Between all the stress and targets, she wanted to do something that she actually enjoyed. So she sat on that bench on platform 2, and put her earbuds back in. No matter how much there was to worry about in her life at that point, nothing could keep her from enjoying the complex and incredible compositions of Golden Sarcophagus, Cradle of Sacred Dreams, and Dances with Eternity. And that last track was so beautiful that she had to go back and listen to it again and again.

When she finally left the station, and wandered down a street filled with shops offering only the bare essentials, Tegan's head was still full of music. And she knew that no matter what life threw at her, she was going to learn to play that song herself, on whichever instruments she could master. She loved the music, and if the band was no more then it was her responsibility to ensure that the music was still played. And without even thinking about it, she knew that she wouldn't be selling those drums. Sure, they would be worth music. But much more important, she was determined that they would play those diabolical rhythms again. She didn't know why, but she had a purpose now. Whether she got into Moistville or not, she knew enough students there; and she was confident that she could find someone else who was touched by those melodies. Someone who could help her to properly appreciate a band long-disbanded, and bring those compositions to the attention of the world.