Thread by @justabloodygame

Peals of rain wailed against the train windows, hitting with such force they sounded like hail. Maggie wrung her hands as she tried and failed, to sleep. She wished she was home, busying herself in the kitchen, recreating the sounds and scents that recalled a more pleasant past.

Fog hid the landscape rolling by, only brief flashes of lightning pierced the clouds and darkness. Had Maggie not known better. She would have sworn it was night. She blinked. It was far, far too dark out there. Almost as if...

...she closed her eyes, cloaked in quiet despair.

She still didn't understand her gift, Nyla and the others refused to explain it to her, or perhaps were too divorced from the human experience to know what there was to explain.

All she knew was this: ever since the deaths of Rome and her Mother, she could... see things.

The sadder she was, the more clearly she saw. The more protected she was from their effects. She sensed the reality behind the world, a veneer of civility hiding the truth. The world was rife with monsters, deformed children of Gods. Monsters, and the people who worshipped them.

So, armored by her grief, for Rome always like an open wound. Her sadness at the great emotional distance between her and her son, she cast about to see what maleficent presence cast its spell on this train, its passengers and the furious storm above.

She walked, disembodied, through a shadowy plane. Staring out into the world, at slumbering passengers, children playing on their tablets, a young couple, heads together, laughing softly. A light drew her past them, out of the car, brightly glowing from beneath the bathroom door.

She hesitated briefly, cowed by its vehemence, before pushing the door open with a translucent hand.

The conductor stood in the center of the small lavatory, arms clasped behind his back, trembling. Otherwise, he was completely still, watching the storm.

"Delicious..."

He spoke so quietly, deliberately, Maggie was not immediately sure he spoke. His golden brown skin on the back of his hands was pulsing, she could see each vein straining to escape his flesh, pressing, beating, like each had a mind of its own.

She took a step back.

"I'm-I'm sorry?" She eventually managed.

The young man turned, his movements somehow both languid rigid, like his limbs were manipulated by multiple puppeteers of varying skill. His eyes were glowing, golden beacons, the hazel pupils swelling, swimming, became the eyes entire.

"Your sadness. So absolute." His voice was guttural, forced through vocal cords that did not fit the chorus of unpleasant sounds, broken glass, razor cutting deep to the bone, the disharmony of darkness.

"So absolute, Maggie. I can see why they..." His lips curled into a sneer.

"They? Who is 'they'?" Somehow Maggie knew, whatever presence sent this creature, this grinning thing with eyes like lighthouse fires. Whatever it was, was also behind the killings in Boston. She was a piece, shuffled around a board she could not see by incomprehensible forces.

The 'man' backed up to the bathroom window.

"Man has forgotten. Forgotten Shibboleth, we watched your faith wither and fade. But though we fell, off those cliffs at the edge of R'lyeh. We did not die."

He stepped through the closed window, like the glass was air, into the dark.

"But... you. That delicious sadness. You will remember. Mags."

And as the conductor's voice faded, so did the clouds and thunder, giving way to the bright morning sun.

Maggie was left alone, cloaked by her grief. Left to wonder at 'Shibboleth', and all she had just seen.