scene fifty-five - bus - before his appearance

Although it sounded rather ridiculous when they actually put together a coherent thought about the matter, Jey had realised that they’d never been on a bus before.

Wringing their hands together and wishing they’d worn something a bit warmer, they glanced to either side of them. The other college students seemed a lot more relaxed than they felt, for some reason. Perhaps they’d all been on buses before.

If Jey couldn’t travel somewhere on their feet, putting one in front of the other as was normal practice, then they just wouldn’t go. They knew cars, from distant years when their parents remained with them rather than disappearing to the ends of the earth--or wherever they went--but not buses.

Buses were large, metallic beasts that grumbled along streets and shocked the life out of them when they made that odd, unexpected hissing sound that they seemed to love to make when they were standing close by. Buses were not things that they sat on, but things that they feared.