In the lonely train station Ruth Lapham waited for her friend.
The towering structure of green-flecked paint and rusted steel was as old as the neighborhood - St Lothar's Station, now all but abandoned. Ruth blinked against the morning sun and tried to recall the last time this place was busy. Still, it had a nostalgic charm, the bricks beneath her feet spattered with a pleasing pattern of moss as if it were a painting of some half-forgotten childhood.
She must have been getting sentimental in her old age; approaching fifty years but looking older. Her blonde hair was greyed and sparse, yet the face it framed had a comforting solidity to it. The kind of person you’d want by your side in harsh times. Ruth looked like she’d had a rough time of it herself, with dark bags looming beneath her tired eyes.
What was she doing here? Ruth let out the smallest of sighs and gave the platform a furtive glance. While archaic and dying, the station was not done yet. A few vagrant souls were waiting nearby for those trains that still ran here. Standing besides her a chubby, patchily dressed woman of indeterminate age gave Ruth a brief smile before returning to the smudged newspaper clenched in her hands.
The gesture took Ruth by surprise - even in the more polished areas of Whitechurch people kept themselves to themselves, rarely interacting with anyone beyond family and, begrudgingly, the neighbours.
Ruth was a long way from home. It was the Summer Solstice for goodness sake. She should have been spending the day with her family, sitting in awkward silence around the dinner table and exchanging hastily written cards like any normal household in the city. Not this.
She’d go later, in the afternoon. There were excuses that could be made. Nothing got started until then anyway - she needed to do this first. A tense shiver shot up her spine. She would get it over with then.
Steadying her nerves, Ruth turned to the woman that had smiled at her only a moment before and spoke in her most forward tone.
“I’m looking for the wizard.”
The vagrant gave her an odd look, before replying bluntly:
“Why?”
Perhaps this was a gatekeeper. Ah unorthodox one, yes, but Ruth had read about wizards employing all sorts of fey folk. Especially the one she was hoping to see. This was the station in the newspaper, wasn't it? Ruth swallowed something acrid to the back of her throat.
“We’re friends,” she explained, forming her words carefully, “old friends.”
How long had it been? Some twenty years back when Ruth was a student in those rosy days which seemed overbrimming with possibilities. She had made many friends but none so bohemian, so exotic, so entrancing as the wizard; a timeless elven woman with next to no fashion sense but enough slender elegance to make up for it. For a hundred nights she had become the closest thing to a friend that Ruth had ever had.
But… well. These things rarely lasted.
“A friend?” The ragged woman looked genuinely confused, even suspicious, “Do you even know her name? Not many do.”
For a while Ruth’s family had even feared she was turning queer: an impossible idea. In an effort to prove them wrong she had drifted away from the friends of her youth and got married to one of the most upstanding gentlemen of the community. That formal relationship hadn’t lasted long either.
“Of course. Her name is Jasmine.”
Another odd look from the gatekeeper.
“No it isn’t. That’s a silly name.”
Ruth blinked, not sure what to make of this.
“Well… yes, it is a bit. But she was a silly person. Who else would elect to study magic of all things? It’s a trivial profession.”
The baggily dressed woman paused. She looked Ruth up and down for a second, and then a second longer.
Something clicked.
“By the gods, is that you Ruth?”
Before Ruth could react she was engulfed in a warm, most improper hug.
“It’s been ages,” the vagrant woman babbled, “You’ve gotten so old!”
It couldn’t be. As she looked closer, yes - beneath the ridiculously out of place winter hat on the stranger’s head - a hint of Elvish ears and that fey complexion.
“Jasmine?” She asked, just to confirm it, “You are Jasmine?”
The elf brushed aside her disbelief like a spring breeze. “Of course. Who’s Jasmine? But look at you! I forgot how quickly humans got all wrinkled.” Her words leapt out in a bewildering stream.
Ruth allowed a light scowl to settle onto her face as she reeled.
“So your name’s not Jasmine? What is then?”
For an instant the wizard seemed to hesitate. “Well… well, how about we go to my study and put the kettle on first?”
Jasmine (or whoever she was) gestured to a partially collapsed gate leading to a dark crevice within the station. Following her finger, Ruth’s eyes focussed on an archaic clock tower wreathed in brick and stone . It looked abandoned; unsafe. Ruth had assumed her friend lived nearby but not actually within the station itself. The smell would be murder.
There was an iron side-gate set into the station walls so rusted it was almost crumbling into nothing. Forcing it open with a piercing shriek of metal on brick, the wizard led Ruth through graffiti splayed corridors slick with some unidentifiable substance, eventually plodding up a hard set of concrete stairs. Struggling not to gag Ruth followed on towards the light. As expected, the scent of the place had a hint of alkaline and long stagnant urine.
“Jennifer,” Ruth saw her friend pause on the stairs, “Jennifer is my name. I changed it to Jasmine at uni to sound cool.”
With that she kept on her upward trajectory as if nothing had happened. Ruth needed a little longer.
“Jennifer? Really?”
“Shut up.”
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