Eight trains

“I’ve been waiting for eight trains!  Eight trains!  Eight trains!”

The repetitive woman squawked indignantly at the sheepish herd of people who were crammed into the tube-train carriage, each of them squeezed into their neighbours with a look of discomfort, hands stretched out for any handhold, praying that they would be able to keep their balance when the train moved off.  She glared at them with unhidden hostility, jabbing her stroller’s wheel into ankles as she tried to force her way into the carriage.

“I need to get home!  Eight trains!” she squawked again.

“There’s no room,” a man in the doorway started to say, his long frame already bent awkwardly to fit in on the edge of the carriage where the ceiling curved down.

“Eight trains,” shrieked the woman, cutting him off.  “Of course there’s room, you could all move down the carriage and make some space.”

The standing passengers looked at one another, puzzlement on their faces.  They were already standing down the full length of the carriage, carefully ignoring the seated passengers, who in turn were hiding their fear that the train would start moving and one of the standers would fall over and land on one of the sitters.  Or worse, several of the sitters, rolling around like a beached walrus, until finally prised off and forced up, backing to a standing position.

“I don’t think we could,” said the man in the doorway, his face flushing with embarrassment at having to point out the obvious truth to the woman.  She pushed on the stroller again, bruising his ankles.

“You don’t think!” she said, her voice smug and a smirk on her face revealing that she thought she was the first person ever to find this comeback.  ‘If you thought, you would have made room for me by now.”

“Why don’t you fold the stroller up?” said another voice from somewhere inside the carriage.  “You’ve said there’s been eight trains, you’ve had plenty of time to fold the stroller up.  Then you wouldn’t need anywhere as much space and you’d be able to get on, wouldn’t you?”

“How dare you!” The little woman was so angry that flecks of white spittle flew from her lips and landed on the stroller.  “How dare you!  I’m entitled, I am!  I should be allowed on the train because I have a stroller with me!  I have a baby!”  She seized the carrier bag hanging ostentatiously from the handle of the stroller and shook it.  “This is a Harrods bag!  That is how much better than all you I am.  I shop at Harrods, and I have a baby and a stroller, and I deserve to be on this train so much more than all of you combined.”

“Fold the stroller up,” came the voice from within the carriage.  “Then you can stand it next to you and you’ll take up the space of two people instead of six.”

“And where would my baby go?  Should I leave him here on this platform, by himself?  Abandon him?  Is that what you want?”

“Carry the baby?  You have arms, I can see them waving that carrier bag around, so they must work.”

“Carry?  Carry the baby?  Do you understand how much work that would be?  Babies are heavy, and then there’s the stroller!  And I have a Harrods bag here with me.  Do you think I should spend my money on things only to leave them behind?”

“Sounds better than leaving the baby behind, but you should make your own mind up,” said the voice within the carriage.  “Get your stroller off this train, stop trying to get on at the very end of the train, fold it up and carry it and the baby and you’ll get on the next one without any trouble.  Make an effort, woman, instead of screaming at the rest of the world to make the effort for you.”

“Eight trains!”

“Nine,” said the voice within the carriage.  “Make someone’s else life a misery, we’ve done nothing to deserve it.”  The carriage doors started to close with an ominous beeping sound, and the recorded voice came over the speaker system.  “Do not obstruct the closing doors.”  The man, bent awkwardly and still red-faced, placed a foot against the stroller and extended his leg, pushing it out of the carriage.  The doors closed, and he pulled his foot back inside just in time.

“Eight trains!” howled the miserable little woman on the platform, raising a fist and shaking it as the train started to move.  “Eight trains!”

Smaragd

"Darling, what's the matter now?"  The Queen was trying to sound interested, but actually she was just irritated.  Teenage daughters were a lot more trouble that she'd expected, and it wasn't even as if the wretched child were her daughter.  Just part of the baggage of marriage, it seemed, like a husband thirty years older than her who preferred reminiscing about sex to actually having any, a duty to appear to the general public far more often than was good for her, and having to re-learn all the etiquette she'd managed to ignore at finishing school.
"I hate my name!" Smaragd, the King's eldest daughter, was having a tantrum.  She beat her fists on the bed, and kicked the bedposts making the canopy above sway dramatically.  "It's a stupid name!  Why did you call me it?"
"Don't ask me," said the Queen, her own frustrations rising to the surface.  "Ask your father."
"Mmm, ask me, mmm, what?" The King, attempting to hide from the Court Magister who wanted more solomonic decrees from him, came into his daughter's bedroom.  He sat down on the bed, narrowly missing sitting on her head, and then looked down for her.
"What's the mmm-matter, dear?  Aren't you well?"
"I hate my name!" yelled Smaragd.  "I hate, hate, hate it!"
"She wants to know why she's called Smaragd," said the Queen, sighing just a tiny little bit to herself.  "I think it's lovely," she lied.  "It means Emerald, you know."
"And we didn't, mmm, have a lot of mmm, choice, either."
Silence greeted this pronouncement, and the King looked a little surprised.  "Has it, mmm, really been so long?  Oh, mmm, that could be a problem-mmm soon then."
More silence, this time with both women in the room staring at him in what he suspected was not adoration or respect.
"We had a com-mmm-petition to name you, mmm," he said, thinking his way back through his memories.  "We were, mmm, fighting a rather depressing war at the time you see. Mmm.  Mmhmm.  Back then there were Svingotts to the south of us, and they were mmm, aggressive.  Every mmm, two or three years mmm, they'd start another mmm fight.  And that would escalate, mmm, into a war.  It was mmm, exhausting.  So I decided, mmm, that we needed to crush them-mmm absolutely.  So we had an mmm, competition to name you.  Whoever provided me with the best mmm increase in army size mmm won the right to name you."
"I think I remember the Svingotts," said the Queen.  "Very... virile men as I recall."  She smiled, unnoticed by the other two.
"You let someone else pick my name?  I could have been called anything!"
"Well, not really, mmm.  There were only three Barons at the mmm time who could raise armies mmm, so you'd have been named by one of mmm, them.  And they would all want mmm my favour."
"So you liked Smaragd?"  Smaragd couldn't have looked any more aghast or appalled.
"Not really.  But like I said, I didn't have mmm-much choice."
"Which Baron won the naming right then?" asked the Queen.  "It can't have been Harald, he'd have named her Haradette or something like that."
"That's worse!"  Smaragd hurled a cushion at the Queen, who caught it and threw it back.
"Um.  None of them," said the King.  More silence and stares met that announcement, so he reluctantly continued.
"A dragon turned up and offered its services.  It pointed out that it effectively gave mmm-me air-power and mmm, trebled my effective army size.  Mmm.  It won straight-away."
"You named me after a dragon?"  Smaragd's face had gone pale white with shock.  "That's so uncool!"
"Umm. Not quite. Umm.  We named you the name the dragon wanted, hmmm, wanted to be the name of the person mmm its son married."
"Wuh?" said Smaragd, not believing her ears.
"You betrothed her to a dragon and named her so that the dragon would marry her?" said the Queen, who was a lot quicker on the uptake.
"Umm.  Yes," said the King deciding that the Court Magister was far preferable to the screaming that was now issuing from his daughter's mouth.