Day Two
From the Passenger Records of Hiraya Sia
Raya
Raya awoke in a train car she did not remember entering.
After she had stumbled into the Lotus, helping herself to the welcome drink she had skipped the first time and treating herself to a few more, the rest of her evening was a blur.
She had fuzzy memories of visiting an opera house inside a thimble and a speakeasy that served distilled drunken thoughts in shot glasses with sugar and mint.
The train car she woke up in was the last page of a book, which she guessed was the reason she had chosen it to fall asleep in.
There were very few things that were more comfortable than a happy ending.
“Then,” said Poirot, “having placed my solution before you, I have the honor to retire from the case…”
The vaguest sense that she had dreamt about Q floated like a cloud in the back of her mind.
She turned to her side. Q’s letter tumbled off her lap and onto an ellipsis.
Its wax seal cracked open like half-parted lips, begging to speak.
Q had stayed the night as she had asked, and it was not fair to ask him for anything more.
She broke the rest of the wax seal and pulled a sheet of the train’s official stationery from the envelope.
A rough sketch of her face filled the page.
She traced a finger over it, feeling the urgency of every line.
Despite his rush, Q had been kind. Her eyes were brighter, her smile wider, than they were in real life.
He had even smoothed her hair, tying it in place with the scarf he had gifted her.
An embroidered butterfly, perched on the corner of the scarf, kept her penciled portrait company.
She turned the sketch over and read the note scribbled on its back.
Hiraya,
This is your face and your name. Let the blue tonic erase everything else, but please, keep these.
Your friend
or something stranger,
Q