Travel cards

A lady of Asian orientation, in porridge cream knitted cardigan, with a pink blossom sunrise over her shoulder.

It is a challenging, but quiet five and twenty past six, and the yesternight’s hedonism is fuming the carriage again. We’re on the obligatory Northern nodding south, but gazing easterly. She holds with precious love a number of cards close to her chest. Softly she mutters incoherent lines like rows of articulate stitches, but we know her journey, for after each utterance, she kisses a particular card like a baby in a crib, before gently returning said card to the back of her held deck. It is a placid ritual, which need not be rushed. One should never run to God as your fire will only be greater.

After several minutes, every card is blessed and then laid back to sleep. With her journey complete, she continues on the Northern south.