Part I: Six Packages, Six Journeys, One Big Wooden Door

16 17 The Chosen: Battle with a Cerberosian Prince The Package the one side, and the exceptionally tall skyscrapers on the other, TJ actually started thinking about the trip. “Nepal… Nepal…” He had no idea where that was. Feeling a slight sense of shame for not knowing, he took out his phone and started looking it up. His search engine showed a host of images of the place. Looks pretty exotic, he mused. Beautiful landscape, and it looks like this place has a lot of mountains. The architecture is nothing like we have here in the U.S. “Where is this place though?” he said out loud. As he scrolled further down the page, he realized Nepal was a country in Southern Asia neighboring India. “I need to get more info about this place. Good ol’ Wikipedia time,” he said with a chuckle. He skimmed through the basics until he spotted something familiar: “Mount Everest! That’s why this place is significant.” He sat there quietly for a few moments. “Hmmm…” He didn’t want to jump to any conclusions, but it was difficult for TJ not to think about the possibility of this trip requiring him to go up the mountain. I mean, who goes to the great Mount Everest and doesn’t go up the mountain? But from where this hotel is, to the mountain, is quite a distance away, so… He stopped himself mid-thought, and decided not to get ahead of himself, yet continued reading about the area. “We’re here,” the driver said. “Wow, that was quick. How long did that take us?” “That took us about an hour and fifty minutes”. “Really. Man, that felt like a couple minutes.” TJ started to get his things together. He didn’t realize how engrossed he had become by all that Nepal reading. It had moved from anxious, concerned reading to a curious fascination. “Thanks, man,” TJ said to the driver “You’re welcome,” the driver said as he drove away. TJ stood in front of the international departures entrance. As people passed by, entering and exiting through the automated sliding doors, TJ stood by the entrance without movement. It was almost as though he couldn’t see anyone else. He was allowing the moment to sink in. He was also giving himself time to think it all through, one last time. “You gotta commit, TJ. You gotta commit,” he said, trying to both motivate and convince himself to keep going. With the resolve to keep moving forward, he now had to figure out which airline would get him to Nepal. He went to one of the information desks and was directed to one of the airlines offering flights to Nepal. “Hi, I’m in need of assistance. I need to get to Kath… Kath-mandu… Nepal?” TJ said with a puzzled look on his face (and the certainty that he butchered the pronunciation). “Yes sir, let me have a look and see if I can assist you with that,” the ticket agent responded, as she laughed ever so softly. TJ felt a little embarrassed at that moment. It didn’t help that he had never been outside of the country before, so his self-consciousness was quite high, though he would never let it show. In fact, this was going to be his first time on a plane. Although he had been around the country, his school sports teams always used the bus or the train. And despite the fact that he lived close to LAX, and had seen and heard many planes depart and land, he had never been on one.