Dawn came softly that morning, like light filtered through memory. The road curved toward a cluster of faded buildings half-lost in fog, and there, at the edge of silence, stood the station. It was small, with peeling paint and a sagging roof of red tiles. A single board hung crookedly, its letters almost erased by sun and years. The smell of rust and damp wood filled the air.
No trains came anymore, not often at least. Grass had grown between the tracks, tall and trembling with dew. A lone signal post leaned at an angle, its rusted arm pointing nowhere. The benches along the platform were cracked, their wood grey with age, yet the air around them held a strange patience — as though everything here was simply waiting for something that would eventually return.
I stepped onto the platform, my footsteps muffled by the mist. The world was quiet except for the faint drip of water from the roof and the slow chirping of unseen birds. A station clock hung above the doorway, its hands frozen at some forgotten hour — half past seven, maybe. The glass was cracked, a spiderweb of time caught in stillness.
There was a ticket counter too — closed, but behind the dusty window, I could still see old stubs scattered like fallen leaves. A wooden stool sat overturned, its legs uneven. Someone had drawn a heart in the dust on the counter, now blurred at the edges.
I sat on a bench, the chill of the wood seeping through my clothes. The mist moved like breath, rising and falling. From somewhere beyond the tracks came the faint bleating of goats, the call of a farmer to his cattle, the rhythm of life continuing just out of sight.
The smell of chai drifted through the air — unexpected, comforting. I followed it to the far end of the platform, where an old man sat beside a small brass kettle on a coal stove. The flame flickered faintly, blue and stubborn. He looked up as I approached, his eyes bright behind a weathered face.
"Train's late," he said, though there was no schedule to speak of. I smiled. "Does it still come?""Sometimes," he said, pouring tea into a chipped cup. "When the mist clears, it remembers the way."
His voice was soft, touched with humor. I took the cup he offered. The tea was strong and sweet, carrying the faint scent of cardamom. I sat beside him, and together we watched the fog drift slowly across the tracks.
"You've been here long?" I asked. He nodded. "All my life. My father was the station master once. In those days, the trains stopped here every hour. People came and went — students, soldiers, families with trunks bigger than their hopes."
He stirred the coals gently, and sparks rose into the mist like fireflies. "Then the new line came," he continued, "and the world moved elsewhere. But I stayed. Someone has to wait, no?"
There was no sadness in his tone, only a kind of acceptance — the peace that comes from belonging to stillness.
A soft wind blew through, stirring the grass between the tracks. The fog thinned a little, revealing the faint shimmer of rails stretching into the distance, silver lines vanishing into pale light.
The old man smiled faintly. "Listen," he said.
At first, I heard nothing — only the whisper of wind. Then, faintly, beneath it, came a low rumble. Not loud, not near, but enough to make the earth tremble ever so slightly. The sound swelled, grew clearer — a whistle, long and distant, echoing through the valley like a memory being remembered.
The old man stood slowly, his eyes fixed on the horizon. "There," he whispered.
And then it came — a train, not fast, not new, but real. Its carriages were few, its paint dull with age. Steam rose gently from its engine, blending with the last of the fog. It slowed as it neared the platform, wheels groaning softly.
The old man lifted his hand in greeting, and the driver waved back through the open window. The train stopped with a sigh, releasing a faint hiss of air. Only two passengers stepped down — a woman with a small suitcase and a boy clutching a red balloon.
They walked past me quietly, their footsteps echoing on the empty platform. The boy turned once to look back at the train, his balloon brushing against the mist. Then they disappeared down the narrow path leading toward the village.
The old man and I watched in silence as the train lingered a while longer, then slowly began to move again. The whistle sounded once more — low, wistful, fading into the pale morning as it disappeared down the line.
The sound lingered long after the train had gone, blending with the rustle of leaves and the soft creak of the signboard in the wind.
The old man poured me another cup of tea. "It still remembers," he said. "That's enough."
I nodded, watching the empty tracks shimmer faintly in the light. The sun had risen higher now, burning away the last of the fog. The station looked different — still old, still quiet, but somehow alive again, as if that single arrival had been enough to wake its heart for another day.
Before I left, I asked the old man if the train would come again. He smiled. "Maybe tomorrow. Maybe never. But it doesn't matter. Some things are meant to wait — that's their way of moving."
I walked back along the road, the air now bright with the warmth of morning. Behind me, the faint clatter of the old kettle continued, a small sound of persistence against the quiet vastness of time.
When I looked back one last time, the station was already fading into the light — its red roof glowing softly, its tracks stretching endlessly toward nowhere in particular.
And the valley, in its own slow rhythm, breathed again — as if time itself had paused there just long enough to sip a cup of tea before moving on.