People Change, Things Stay the Same

Cameron (okay, so I couldn’t think of a better character name than Cameron) walked up the hill, the compound door closing behind him as he continued. It was early on a Thursday morning, but, because of where he was, the sun was already as brilliant as he ever remembered. He went accompanied by Sara, one of those near and dear friends that only worried about others, never thinking about herself. As soon as they reached the top of the hill, the exhaust fumes where clear, the horns were in full function and the cars went flying by. Sara soon saw the bus she needed, she said goodbye and she was gone in an instant. 
Five minutes passed, then ten, then fifteen, he had gotten used to waiting for the exact bus he needed. On previous days, when he didn’t need it, there were at least three or four of those buses that passed by just shortly after he got to the top of the hill. It’s not really that he minded the wait, things moved a lot slower since the move and it really never bothered him, really that’s how he preferred it. Next thing, doors opening, driver’s assistant shouting, and, "Welcome to another overly packed bus, with more people than should ever be allowed on something that goes that fast." 
Twenty or thirty minutes to the transfer station, and then it was on to their version of a subway system, basically a bus with its own traffic lanes. From there, only ten or fifteen minutes more. He got off at the right stop this time; he learned the hard way the day before. Fortunately, the woman he was meeting up with only lived a block from there. He had recently made acquaintances with Joanna, who would be working with him in the same foundation. It had been a long time since he had to make new friends, add to that the fact that time and life had made him much more apprehensive and guarded, and it was a little more difficult than it ever was before. On the other hand, she was nice enough and he really needed to try to get back to where he was before. In the end, he opted for just not worrying about those kinds of things; life is simple, but we complicate it.
"Hola, buen día, ¿cómo amaneciste?" He had never greeted people in the morning with, "¿cómo amaneciste?", a rough translation would be, "How did you do getting up this morning?", but this was the common morning salute, and it had already caught on with him. After a brief chat with the doorman about how to get to the train station, they were off. 
The train station was remarkably empty; there must have been a handful of people, no more. Finding the appropriate ticketing counter was easy enough, if not for the fact that there were three different agencies for the same trip. On the other hand, one would always be fifty cents cheaper than the other, and that was the one they wanted. Three dollars turned out to be the final price. With a train terminal it’s hard to get lost; you just have to find the right car you supposed to be in. True to his previous ticketing experiences, Cameron found that they had mislabeled theirs with a train car that didn’t exist. After walking from one end of the train to the steam engine and back, there it was, the car that, formerly, didn’t exist, no. 51.They got on just as the fossil of a machine began to lurch forward.
From the outside, you would have wondered what was holding the thing together, but, on the inside, it was great. He thought back to when he rode a train in Mindundo, to Cataño, a place where it never snowed, except for that day, when he was on a train that had no heat and broken windows. The train from Canto, the one he had just boarded, was really magnificent in comparison. The seats were suede, the floors were tiled and the people were nice; Cameron had yet to see snow in Canto, so he hoped for good things. The way there was and wasn’t like he remembered; there he wondered if it was him or if was the mountains. 
Downhill or down mountain, the train picked up speed to the point that it began to scare a bit. Cameron thought back to his days working on the train yards in Idaca and the repairs he did daily on the air brake system. True to his characteristic and classic lack of tact, he made a comment to Joanna about the noise the brakes made as they went charging downward, "I hope the conductor knows how to use those brakes, the noise from the ventilation of the brakes sounds right enough I suppose."
It turns out that the brakes were working fine, because they got to Baes without problems. The people there lived off of tourism; Cameron wasn’t sure if it was for that reason that they were so much nicer, or if it was simply because Baes is so small and isolated. Either way, his experiences there were much more relaxed than they had been in Canto. Even though it was the same as before, the place made all of the difference. He felt himself thinking more in the past than ever, reflecting and trying to figure things out. 
That night, he had a couple of smokes, not because he wanted to pick up the habit again, but because he felt nostalgic enough to long for the solitary practice of sitting or standing alone on a roof top, taking a drag, letting it go and staring into the distance, staring down below or staring at nothing in particular. Sure enough, he later passed the rest of the half pack of Lucky Reds to a man on the street that looked like he could use a smoke more than himself. 
During the days, they walked, hiked and got to know the small town that was Baes. By the third day, they almost felt like locals. Really that wasn’t the worse thing, they only had one day left in that small, between the mountains, town.