Chapter 1 — Train
I am Nuo, the Unbegun
the silence before stars learned to burn.
And thus begins another Wandering of the Unbegun.
Now, children.
You may remember how the previous one began.
Nuo was sad.
The council nods.
A shocking development.
Then somewhere between trains, mountains, strangers, goats, snow, terrible decisions, and several violations of common sense,
the weight disappeared.
Not forever.
Nothing good ever seems to understand the concept of forever.
But for a while.
For a beautiful little while,
my chest felt lighter.
The world felt larger.
Breathing required less negotiation.
The council smiles.
And I thought perhaps that was enough.
Perhaps the wandering had worked.
Perhaps whatever ancient machinery inside me had finally stopped grinding against itself.
Children.
It had not.
The council sighs.
Because the thing about weight is this.
Sometimes you lose it.
Sometimes you wake up one morning and realize your chest no longer feels like someone built a house inside it and filled every room with stones.
And you think.
Ah.
Wonderful.
I am cured.
The council immediately begins laughing.
Cruel.
But fair.
Because for cryptids like me,
the weight has a habit of returning.
Quietly at first.
A little heaviness.
A little exhaustion.
A little less light.
Until one day you realize it has moved back in completely,
rearranged the furniture,
and somehow acquired legal ownership of the property.
The council grows quiet.
This time,
it returned with vengeance.
I was miserable.
Not poetic miserable.
Not beautiful tragic protagonist staring dramatically through rainy windows miserable.
Just miserable.
The ordinary kind.
The exhausting kind.
The kind where even your own house begins feeling hostile.
Children.
Home was draining my light.
Every room felt smaller.
Every wall felt closer.
Everything familiar had somehow become heavy.
And somewhere inside all that noise,
I remembered something.
The council leans forward.
A train.
A terrible train.
A glorious train.
A cage door opening.
The world waiting on the other side.
And suddenly,
for the first time,
I knew what to do.
I must wander once more.
The council erupts.
THE SEQUEL.
Correct.
Now.
Last time,
I fled with approximately the planning ability of a startled pigeon.
One moment miserable.
Next moment train.
This time?
Children.
Character development.
I booked the ticket in advance.
The council gasps.
How far in advance?
A week.
The council stands in stunned silence.
Seven entire days.
Planning.
Forethought.
Responsibility.
Who was this man?
What had he done with the Unbegun?
I was practically a functioning adult.
The council begins preparing awards.
Do not.
Because apparently the universe had no intention of rewarding this growth.
You see,
somehow,
despite booking an entire week ahead,
I received almost exactly the same seating arrangement as last time.
The council collapses.
Of course.
A shared seat.
That magnificent invention designed by someone who clearly hated the human spine.
Children.
It was horrible.
Cramped.
Uncomfortable.
A diplomatic negotiation between limbs.
And yet.
Wonderful as well.
The council understands.
Because I knew this place.
Not the train.
Not the seat.
The feeling.
That strange moment before departure.
The anticipation.
The uncertainty.
The little voice whispering:
What if this doesn’t work?
The council listens.
What if Rishikesh isn’t what you need?
What if the first wandering was a fluke?
What if the road doesn’t make you lighter this time?
What if you return exactly as you left?
Children.
The first journey had been ignorance.
I didn’t know what wandering could do.
This time,
I did.
And somehow that made leaving scarier.
Because now I had expectations.
Now I knew what freedom tasted like.
And I was afraid the world might refuse to serve it twice.
The council grows quiet.
Still.
The train moved.
Home began disappearing behind me.
And there I was again.
Sitting behind the cage doors,
waiting for them to open.
The same principle remained.
Nobody knew me.
Nobody knew the weight.
Nobody knew who I had been yesterday.
Nobody knew the version of me trapped inside that house.
To everyone on that train,
I was simply some strange boy with messy hair, questionable sleeping posture, and suspiciously frequent trips toward the toilet.
The council raises an eyebrow.
We will get there.
Children.
The beautiful thing remained unchanged.
If nobody knew me,
I could become whoever I wanted.
A blank page.
Again.
Not the first save file.
A New Game Plus.
The council applauds.
All previous stupidity carried forward.
Now.
The journey began almost exactly as the first had.
Me.
My soon to be shared seat.
Excitement.
Anticipation.
A little fear.
A little hope.
And eventually,
sleep.
The council nods.
My most dependable travel companion.
Children.
Motion equals unconsciousness.
This is one of the fundamental laws governing the Unbegun.
Put me inside a moving vehicle long enough,
and my brain simply decides:
We have contributed enough to reality today.
Shutdown initiated.
And so,
I passed out.
Hours later,
I awakened.
Disoriented.
Confused.
Neck damaged in ways modern medicine may never fully repair.
And then I noticed something.
The council leans forward.
The other passenger had not arrived.
My shared seat
remained unshared.
The council erupts.
GLORY.
Children.
Do you understand what this meant?
Space.
Actual space.
Horizontal space.
The rarest commodity in Indian rail travel.
I stared at that empty portion of the seat like a medieval peasant seeing electricity for the first time.
Then,
without hesitation,
I claimed it.
The council applauds.
Manifest destiny.
For once,
I could sleep horizontally.
No folded limbs.
No diplomatic treaties with strangers.
No waking up with someone else’s knee participating in my internal organs.
Just me.
Stretched out.
Luxurious.
Royal.
A king among sleeper class cryptids.
Now.
There was, however,
one problem.
The council already knows.
Nicotine.
Children.
An addict must occasionally answer the ancient call.
And trains,
rather inconveniently,
have opinions regarding indoor smoking.
So every now and then,
I performed a ritual.
Stand.
Look innocent.
Walk toward the toilet.
Disappear.
Smoke.
Return pretending absolutely nothing suspicious had occurred.
The council sighs.
A master criminal.
Now.
During one of these highly sophisticated operations,
I met him.
The council leans forward.
A stranger.
Naturally,
we never exchanged names.
Because apparently I learned absolutely nothing from the previous wandering.
The council applauds.
Consistency.
We talked.
Where are you from?
Where are you going?
The usual questions strangers ask before deciding whether fate has accidentally assigned them a side quest together.
I told him I was from Kerala.
And so,
naturally,
he called me Kerala.
The council nods.
Efficient.
He was either from Nepal,
going to Nepal,
had recently been in Nepal,
or possessed some other Nepal related characteristic my archivist brain has since deleted.
Children.
The details are gone.
The title remains.
He became Nepal.
The council approves.
Kerala.
Nepal.
Two nations represented by two idiots hiding near a train toilet.
Diplomacy had never looked finer.
Now.
We spoke for a while.
Nothing particularly profound.
Nothing destined for history.
Until Nepal asked me a question.
The council braces.
“Do you smoke weed?”
Now.
A normal person might have become suspicious.
A normal person might have wondered why a stranger aboard a train was conducting a narcotics survey.
A normal person possesses something called survival instincts.
Children.
I am Nuo.
The council collectively lowers their heads.
Correct.
I looked at him.
And asked the obvious question.
“You got pot?”
The council erupts.
And thus began the remainder of the train journey.
Now.
I will say this.
Nepal’s contribution to international relations was strong.
Very strong.
The council nods.
Perhaps unnecessarily strong.
From that point onward,
the train stopped behaving like transportation and became more of an ongoing philosophical uncertainty.
Events occurred.
I witnessed them.
Probably.
The distinction became increasingly difficult to establish.
At one point,
I saw a woman threatening to jump from the train.
The council goes silent.
Children.
To this day,
I am approximately twenty percent certain that actually happened.
The remaining eighty percent has been placed in archival quarantine under:
“Did That Just Happen?”
The council writes this down.
A rapidly expanding department.
Perhaps she was real.
Perhaps the argument was real.
Perhaps nobody threatened anything and I witnessed an entirely ordinary conversation through the interpretive lens of Nepal’s agricultural diplomacy.
History may never know.
What I do know is that somewhere between sleep,
smoke,
coffee,
strangers,
stations,
and reality occasionally forgetting its job,
two days passed.
Two strange,
familiar,
wonderful days.
And then,
the train stopped.
The council grows quiet.
I stepped out.
Looked around.
And recognized the place immediately.
The bus station.
That bus station.
The same one.
The council smiles.
Children.
Years, or what felt like years, had somehow folded over themselves.
There I stood again.
At the place where the first wandering had once continued toward the mountains.
Except this time,
I wasn’t the same person who had arrived there before.
The first Nuo had stumbled into that station terrified someone would scam him over a bus ticket.
This Nuo had survived Kasol.
The pack.
Pirates of Parvati.
Snow.
Waterfalls.
Goats.
Digital robbery.
And a jacket publicly advertising narcotics he did not possess.
The council nods.
Veteran status achieved.
I stood there with my bag over my shoulder,
the weight still somewhere inside my chest,
but home now far behind me.
And I felt it again.
That tiny shift.
That first breath.
That almost imperceptible loosening.
The cage doors.
The council watches.
Last time,
I hadn’t known they existed.
This time,
I had travelled all this way specifically to find them.
And children,
there they were.
Opening.
Again.
Thus concludes Chapter One.
The Return.
The Shared Seat That Wasn’t.
Kerala and Nepal.
And Two Days Filed Under Questionable Reality.
The first wandering had taught me that the cage could open.
The second began because I remembered.
And somewhere beyond that familiar bus station,
past another road,
another vehicle,
another collection of strangers,
waited Rishikesh.
I didn’t know whether it would make me lighter.
I didn’t know whether the road could perform the same miracle twice.
But for the moment,
I was outside the cage.
And that was enough.
The Unbegun had begun wandering again.
