The Ballad of Dominic: Prologue

A summer's night, 1806

The Island of Sodor, a small island off the coast of England, slept.

So deep in sleep were the people of the island that no one noticed a series of small explosions high above them.

Then the last and biggest explosion roared, and an unnatural blue-green light streaked through the sky, hitting the island where one day a certain tram would make his home.

---

The next day, workmen were scavenging the area. A railway was being built on Sodor, and they needed metal for engines and their cars.

"Hey guys!" one called to the others. "Look what I found! A pile of metal that we don't even have to mine!"

His coworkers came and saw a pile of metal, lying in a smoking crater. There had been more, but most of it had burned up in the fall.

"Do you think we can make an engine out of this?" another asked.

"I don't think there's enough for an engine," the first replied, "but I think we can make a coach out of what we have."

---

Eventually, they finished. It was a simple design, a box with glass windows, but it felt sturdy enough.

One workman was mixing up white paint to paint the coach. He needed some sand to get the texture right, but he was running out of his normal sand. Luckily, he found some (which, oddly, was a light pinkish-purple color) and mixed it in.

He painted the front with the paint, and he was going to pain the rest when something happened.

The front of the coach erupted in a flash of light. The workman didn't notice it, but it generated a wave of light that spread across the globe. He shut his eyes to brace for what he thought was an explosion.

When he opened his eyes, he saw that the coach...had a face. The white part had been turned into a face, with soft light gray skin, and wise eyes.

The coach looked at her unwitting creator.

"Hello," she said.

The workmen were completely surprised that a machine had come alive. Little did they know she wouldn't be the last.