Off the rails

Henry’s pretty happy with the new tracks for his train set he got from mum and dad when he went back to visit home, for the summer break. They all work fine with the trains he’s got right now, and they have some sloping bits and ramps and even a few tunnels that he could send the train through. Owen got him a little elevator thing, too, the train could go on it and he could press a button and the elevator would lift up slowly and the train could go on the high rails with the support beams that he got for Christmas.

Right now he was building his new track in the courtyard, because his room wasn’t big enough. He’s got a plastic box to put all his toy train things in, with batteries in case they need chancing, and it was sunny so he didn’t have to worry about the trains getting wet.

He was so focused on his trains that he barely noticed the person that came within his vincinity when their thoughts entered his mind. He was fine playing by himself. Instead, he linked another segment to the track he was building. The track was going to go all the way around the tree, then maybe into a tunnel he’s going to make out of rocks.

@Chio

Henry was setting up the little train elevator when he felt something - no, somebody's voice near him. Usually he'd ignore it, he hears enough voices and if it's just a normal person there's no point in going out of his way to listen to it, but this voice wasn't happy. He put down the elevator and tilted his head, one hand still around the locomotive of his train set.

The voice was angry. No, not angry. It was the other feeling word, the one Owen likes to use. It was... nervous. It was anxious. That was the word. Somebody wasn't very happy with themselves. Somebody was sad, and angry with themselves all at once, and Henry didn't like that. He didn't like that at all. And normally he didn't like getting in other people's business, especially grownups, but he could tell that this was a little kid, like him, and he didn't know kids could have such grownup feelings. And he wanted to help them.

"Hello?" He called out, dropping his toy train. He stood up and dusted off his trousers before continuing - mum'd be mad if he didn't keep his clothes neat. "Is anyone there? You could come and play with me, if you'd like. "

@Chio

"Hi yourself," Henry said, looking at the new boy with curiousity. The new boy was afraid, but he wasn't very sure what he was afraid of. Henry's not that scary, was he? And nobody was really scared of trains. "I'm Henry."

The kid seemed pretty quiet, and he was blushing, so Henry thought it might be nice to not make him talk. Henry didn't like it when other people made him talk. It made him anxious as well. So he thought it would be nice to let the kid just watch until he was fine with talking. That was alright to Henry. Henry was fine building the track himself.

Henry played with the kid watching for almost 3 or 4 minutes, his thoughts running in the background, before he found it a bit weird. Why wouldn't the new boy join him?

"Do you want to try? Here. You can just attach it to this one. You can try it." Henry said, turning around and holding out a piece of rail to the new boy. "It's easy. Promise."

"There you go! That was easy, wasn't it?" Henry said, when the other boy took the track, clicking it onto the one he had laid down before. Building the tracks weren't really too hard. Owen had taught him when he was littler, and now it's his turn to teach. It was difficult laying everything out and calculating where to put the powered tracks and making things look nice. And putting down the little stations, of course. But the new boy could learn that later.

He knew that the new boy was curious, but he also knew that if he spoke too much people got bored and walked away, so he pointed at his plastic box, opening the clasps of the lid. "Here's all the tracks and everything I have, but be careful with them. Do you like planes as well? Or maybe lego? I've got more in my room. If you want. Maybe later, though."

"Hajime." Henry said, attempting to replicate the pronunciation to the best of his abilities. It wasn't the best. He blushed and smiled. "Sorry. That wasn't right, was it? Where are you from?"

Hajime was quiet. That suited Henry fine, though. It was pretty obvious from what Henry could hear that Hajime didn't want to talk about where he came from. Which he understood. Not lots of kids came from really nice places. Like Mr. Theo and Mr. Jamie, they didn't come from really great places, and didn't like to talk much about it, and Henry hadn't asked. Henry just likde their company. And he liked Hajime's company.

"I got it right! That's great." Henry said, and grinned. He was missing one of his teeth again. It was a canine, the sharp ones. He washed the teeth and kept it. He's too old to believe in tooth fairies now, but he wanted to have it anyways.

"This is a powered rail. So it can make the train go really fast when you turn it on. We can put it so the train can go up the ramp there. I've only got a couple. You have to put batteries in them, or else they won't work." He held out one of the powered rails to Hajime. "You want to try? Switch it on!"