At the platform

After the bus finally pulled into Windermere station, Muffy was one of the last to hop off onto the warm asphalt. Everything was unfamiliar to her, but there was really no time to ruminate. Caught up in a small flood of people moving into the station, Muffy found herself propelled forward, nudged and jostled this way and that into the main lobby of the station. No one seemed to care, despite her nervous white-pawed gesticulations, that she did not possess any form of travel pass whatsoever. However, a kindly-looking little old lady did smile down at her as she narrowly missed stepping on Muffy. She pondered briefly at the foot of a ticket machine, peering at the prices of single tickets down to London. Adult or child? The options flashed on the screen that she could just about see from where she was standing. Muffy did not know, and much to her bewilderment, there was no "Cute bunny of indeterminate age" option on the machine. Her momentary hesitation caused her to be roughly pushed aside by the same little old lady who spat and muttered under her breath about the ill mannered youth of today.

Seeing that no one was interested in asking her for a ticket or checking her ID, Muffy managed to hop unnoticed and unmolested to the main platform, where small, unseemly clumps of people sat or stood about, waiting for the next train. There had just been a small cloudburst, and puddles of rain had formed on the platform. There was something strangely fresh and clean about the smell of rain on a station platform, having washed away all the muddy detritus from the boots of tired travellers. Muffy gazed at the gleaming, wet tracks which would take her on her journey, and felt a twinge of excitement while thinking about the new experiences that now lay before her, things she had never dreamed about. She had never been on a train in her life. Her tongue felt now like sandpaper in her mouth. All this excitement had made her awfully thirsty, she realised.