The train starts rolling out of the station, slow but firm, and she looks out the window as she kneels on the seat to readjust the luggage over her head. The townscape is grey, common and the walls display a dirty shine. Yet the sun throws beams all over the tired roofs and the old stones assume an air of pride. It shines on her face and strikes her eyes. The pupil grows small and the iris is overflowed. She feels the motion carrying her far away. A sense of quiet strength relaxes the muscles of her back, she thinks: I'm leaving, she's satisfied. She drowns herself in an illusion of freedom making her almost love the dull surroundings shrinking behind her.

Free, cool, young, on the way to happiness... this sounds like an end, anyone would hope it's an end. But it's a beginning and it goes further, in possible joys and disasters, risking to throw itself against a wall and get locked in a prison. She knows it and she can do just one thing: hope it never happens.

She's setting off to the North, a destination that never stopped sticking to her, in pain and recovery. She sees the houses, the bricks, the low sky, the rain; it's all so familiar to her... plains, so flat under the huge metal sky.

The journey was long, and she had little time to connect in London. She almost made it too late at King's Cross. As she sat in the direct train to Aberdeen, she was tired but she had never been so eager to stay awake during a trip, as if she wanted to grasp forever the taste of change and anticipation. There was this long strip of land, this long corridor stretching right into the Cold. She felt she had to fix every detail, even the smell of the tuna-mayonnaise sandwich in her mind, like as many 3D photographs. Night was lurking behind the horizon and a hint of sweat was hanging in the air. It was warm in the wagon and soon slumber overpowered her as her head reclined to the side, almost resting on the glass.