The Station

Claire had gotten to the station forty minutes early, which had seemed like a good idea at home and felt increasingly stupid now that she was attempting to move through the crowd with trolley to carry two huge suitcases. Getting through the crowd consisted mostly of constant "excuse me"s, "sorry"s and "coming through"s.

One wheel dragged left no matter how she pushed, which made weaving through the concourse slower than it needed to be. The place was enormous, glass and iron arching somewhere above the noise, the air thick with coffee from the stands along the wall and the flat mechanical voice announcing departures she couldn't make out over everyone talking at once. Suitcases everywhere. Families saying goodbye in the middle of the walkway like nobody else needed to get past. The departure boards sat too high and too far to read properly, and the signs kept sending her down corridors that split into more corridors.

It took her longer than she wanted to admit to find the station she had to be at, honestly she couldnt see a damn thing. But thats when she realized that there was a current running through the crowd, dozens of mana signatures moving in the same direction, until it reached another huge group of mana signatures. Pressing into it made something behind her eyes tighten, a dull ache that hadn't been there a second ago. But Claire immediately knew where she had to be now.

That was the platform. Obviously that was the platform.

She turned the trolley and followed them.

Finally passing through the gate, she checked in with her train card and stepped onto the platform. It felt like entering a completely different world. The air was heavy in a way she couldn't understand, heavy enough that she had to put effort into breathing, like her body had forgotten how to do it on its own. She couldn't pinpoint what was causing it until a shattering pain coursed through her skull.

The mana signatures. She had never been around this many mages at once.

Hunched over and fairly sure she was about to puke, she looked around for anyone else struggling with it. Nobody was. The rest of the crowd just looked tense, wound up, nervous in a way Claire couldn't understand. She felt completely left in the dark.

Closing her eyes, she tried to calm herself down. In and out, in and out, drowning out the signatures pressing in from every direction. It didn't work. The world tilted and kept tilting, and she could feel every single person on that platform, exactly where they stood, every step before they took it.

Then she felt a mana signature she recognized. It was getting closer, and she couldn't see a thing because she was still folded over her luggage, so she did the only thing she could and focused on it. Just that one. Her body had figured out the cure before her mind did.

Her breathing started to even out. She stopped gulping air through her mouth and had just about found a rhythm when a voice cut through the crowd above her.

"You good?"

sorry for updating the story so few, college just started but i really do plan to bring out more consistent updates. it'll be a little before we get to the smut so please bear with me.