He shifted slightly in his seat, checking his watch before returning his listless gaze to the landscape outside the window

He shifted slightly in his seat, checking his watch before returning his listless gaze to the landscape outside the window. Usually the snowfall made the countryside look fresh and new, like something out of a painting, but today, the blanket of crisp white clinging to the foothills, fields, and barren trees just looked desolate and empty -- like the whole world was in mourning.

He pressed his forehead against the cold glass of the window, checking his watch again. Under normal circumstances, he loved riding the train, but on a day like today, he dreaded both the journey and his destination.

The snow crunched under his feet as he wove his way through the cemetery, past uneven rows of monuments stabbing upward like so many rotten teeth lining the gaping mouth of the underworld.

He stopped in the all too familiar place, sighing as he read so many names. How many generations reposed here before him?

He lit his incense, securing the sticks as best he could in the frozen earth. As the tendrils of smoke curled into the cold grey sky, he had a horrible sense of finality, as though he watched their souls drifting away on the biting wind.

Day had slipped into night as he rode the train away from his family's birthplace and back to the bustling metropolis that he now called home. With every new grave in that place he once cherished, his grip on that nostalgic anchor grew more tenuous.

As the warm glow of the city lights illuminated the low-lying clouds in the distance, his wan smile reminded him that he belonged among those lights now.

He loved riding this train again, as his past drifted into memory and his future drew ever closer, kilometer by kilometer, to the last stop on the line.