Anchor Points

“Some days, survival is just diplomacy in a collapsing tent.”

Re-entering the camp, I was struck by the silence. It wasn't just quiet—it was the kind of hush that follows a blow. The kind that settles deep into the bones and says, something has changed. The air held a strange stillness, as though the landscape itself was waiting for whatever came next. The bustling energy that had defined the camp barely an hour ago—movement, chatter, life—had been drained away, leaving only echoes.

The tents stood like watchful figures, their canvas walls shifting gently in the breeze, whispering secrets to one another. Even they seemed subdued, as though mourning. The fire pit, usually our centre—our crude little hearth—had died back into itself. Only a few embers glowed feebly beneath a scatter of blackened wood, the faintest tongues of flame licking upward as if trying to hold on. But the warmth was gone.

I scanned the area quickly, instinctively counting heads and checking corners. But it didn’t take long to realise Glenda was missing. A creeping unease coiled in my gut.

I checked the tents one by one, pulling back flaps, calling her name softly. Empty. Each canvas doorway revealed only rumpled bedding, scuffed ground, the imprint of where someone had once been. The lack of movement, of breath, was jarring. It was as if she’d been erased—cut cleanly out of the picture while no one was watching. And the feeling it left behind was worse than worry. It was that sinking dread that something was unfolding just beyond the edges of my awareness.

I stood for a moment, undecided, the silence pressing in like a weight on my chest. Then I turned, trying to steady myself with purpose. Find Paul. If anyone had seen her, if there was a thread to pull, it would be with him.

He wasn’t difficult to locate. He hadn’t moved far from where everything had unravelled earlier—Jamie’s grief, Beatrix’s departure, the terrible clarity that Joel was missing. Paul stood with his hands at his sides, his posture uncharacteristically still. His gaze was fixed far off into the open desert, locked on something I couldn’t see.

There was a heaviness in Paul I hadn’t seen before—an inward folding of the self, as though something vital had been dimmed. He looked like a man straining to hear a sound that hadn’t yet arrived. And as I approached him, I realised I felt it too—that taut sense of waiting. Not just for Glenda. Not even solely for news of Joel. But for the world itself to settle back into something intelligible.

The brittle crunch of dry dust beneath my boots broke the silence. A small, ordinary sound, yet it felt amplified in the stillness, almost intrusive. Paul turned at once. His gaze, once distant, locked onto me. The shift in his expression was subtle but telling—contemplation giving way to a kind of strained attentiveness. Whatever thoughts had held him captive loosened just slightly at my arrival.

His face was drawn, the lines around his eyes deeper than I remembered, as if the morning had aged him in hours. There was something slumped in his stance, as though gravity had grown heavier since dawn.

“Kain’s determined to wait at the Portal for Beatrix or Luke to return,” I told him, voice tight with the quiet urgency I hadn’t yet shaken. The image of Kain—wounded, isolated, clinging to some fragile hope at the edge of the unknown—was still sharp in my mind.

Paul made a soft, gravelled sound, halfway between a sigh and a grunt. “Don’t expect them any time soon,” he muttered, his gaze wandering again, pulled back to the lifeless horizon. The words weren’t cynical, just… hollow. The conviction that usually coloured his voice was gone, replaced with something far more fragile. I couldn’t remember ever hearing that note in him before—weariness, not just of body but of belief.

I frowned, a chill of unease prickling at the back of my neck. Paul’s relentless optimism, occasionally maddening though it was, had always acted as a strange kind of ballast. He was the one who kept suggesting solutions when the rest of us faltered, the one who seemed incapable of surrendering to despair. To see that light dimmed now—that small defiance of hope—was unsettling. It made the ground feel less stable beneath my feet.

“Kain’s leg has started to bleed again. He can’t go far,” I added, steering the conversation back to the immediate, to something actionable. We couldn’t afford to lose ourselves in speculation or defeat. Not now.

Paul’s posture sagged. His arms hung loose at his sides, as if the strength had leaked out of them. “We don’t have a doctor anymore,” he said, voice low and flat.

His words hit like a dropped stone in the pit of my stomach.

“What!?” The word left my mouth before I could temper it, sharp and too loud. A flare of panic surged through me, scorching its way up my spine. Had something happened to Glenda while I’d been away? The idea opened up a dozen terrible possibilities. I imagined her hurt, lying somewhere unseen, or worse—another name added to the mounting list of those we couldn’t account for. The ground beneath me seemed to tilt.

But Paul’s next words didn’t bring comfort—only a different kind of confusion.

“Glenda’s gone with Jamie and Charity,” he said quietly. “Something about being determined to find her father.”

I blinked, trying to make the words fit into the version of Glenda I knew. But they wouldn’t sit right. Her father? Here? In Clivilius? It didn’t make sense. Glenda, for all her empathy, had always struck me as deeply rooted in the real—factual, rational, pragmatic. She didn’t traffic in hunches or visions. She believed in data, in things that could be dissected, proven. For her to leave everything—and everyone—behind on the basis of a feeling?

I stared at Paul, disbelief tightening across my face. It wasn’t just that the decision was reckless. It was that it didn’t feel like her. Not the Glenda I thought I was beginning to understand.

But then again… this place had a way of unsettling all our certainties. Of reaching past reason and pulling something raw and ancient to the surface.

Paul’s next words mirrored my own thoughts almost too precisely. “I don’t really understand any of it either,” he said, the bluntness of it landing hard between us. The line of his brow deepened, and his jaw tensed as he spoke. Frustration—so rarely visible in him—was now etched plainly into his features, like a crack running through once-unshakeable stone.

I looked at him closely, reading more than what he said. This wasn’t just confusion. This was a man holding too many threads, none of which led anywhere solid.

Inside me, something shifted. Confusion churned with concern, tangling into a knot that pressed hard against my ribs. Glenda’s absence didn’t just feel sudden—it felt like a blow to the system. Her calm, capable presence had been one of the quiet anchors in all this chaos. Without her, a sort of structural beam had gone missing. The group was holding—for now—but I could feel the splintering begin. Kain at the Portal, wounded and stubborn. Paul, frayed and faltering. Me, swinging between roles I hadn’t prepared for.

It felt like the whole fragile arrangement we called survival here was unravelling, pulled loose thread by thread, and we didn’t have enough hands to hold it together.

I was still caught in the undertow of that thought when Chris appeared, his voice cutting cleanly through the mental haze.

“The coriander plants are still looking healthy,” he said, matter-of-fact, as if we were back in Collinsvale discussing the kitchen garden before supper. “I’ve just been checking on them,” he added, with a subtle lift in his tone—pride, soft and unobtrusive, but unmistakable.

I blinked, surprised by the sudden pivot in conversation, but oddly… grateful. It was so mundane, so gloriously normal. In a world where nothing made sense and people disappeared through glowing walls, coriander had survived. The plants were still thriving. They hadn’t been swallowed up by grief or panic or doubt. They were just… growing.

And somehow, that mattered.

Paul’s lips tugged into a half-smile, subtle but real. The weariness didn’t vanish, but for a flickering moment, it loosened its grip. I saw something familiar in his eyes—a glint of the man who used to find optimism in compost heaps and water filters, who believed survival was as much about spirit as it was logistics.

It was fleeting, but it was enough. Enough to believe that maybe we hadn’t lost everything just yet.

Chris, ever the one reaching for the pulse of the earth beneath our feet, turned toward me with that familiar gleam in his eyes—the one I’d seen so many times before, whether we were cataloguing fungi on a mist-laced hillside or composting vegetable scraps behind our Collinsvale cottage. “I’m keen for Karen and me to do some more soil exploration,” he said, his gaze searching mine, that flicker of excitement already blooming behind his words. That look of his—so full of intent and potential—always caught me slightly off guard, even now. In this strange place where so much felt untethered, Chris's curiosity remained defiantly intact. It was, in its own quiet way, a rebellion against despair.

Before I could respond, Paul’s voice cut cleanly through the moment.

“I’m not sure that I see that as a priority,” he said, the firmness in his tone unmistakable. There was no hesitation, no softening to take the edge off his words. “We need better protection and storage space first. Putting up the sheds should be our top priority.”

I saw it immediately—the flicker of tension that passed over Chris’s face, the faint shift of his posture. His jaw tightened, and his arms folded almost unconsciously across his chest. He didn’t say anything, not yet, but I could see the protest forming in the set of his shoulders. He had never responded well to having his focus redirected—not when he believed, so deeply, that the soil might be our key to something lasting here. It wasn’t just passion. It was principle.

But Paul needed to feel heard right now. He was shouldering more than most, trying to hold together a group fraying at the seams. If Chris pushed back, it would only widen the cracks that were already forming.

So I stepped in, before the argument had a chance to take shape.

“No worries, Paul. Chris and I will go and assess the work that’s already been done on the concrete bases,” I said evenly, offering the words as a bridge. A gesture. It wasn’t surrender—it was strategy. A way to align without abandoning the things we still cared about. We needed stability, but we also needed momentum. And if that meant shifting our footing temporarily, then so be it.

Paul’s expression softened the moment I spoke. A flicker of relief moved across his face—brief, but visible. “Thank you,” he said, and though his voice was quiet, the weight in it was unmistakable. It wasn’t just appreciation. It was something closer to need.

I reached out and gently tugged Chris’s arm, drawing him away from the conversation. He followed without resistance, though I could feel the energy still simmering in him, just beneath the surface. Once we were far enough to speak privately, I stopped and turned to face him fully.

“You start looking at the concrete slabs for the storage shed,” I said, my tone firm but laced with warmth. My eyes locked onto his, making sure he heard the seriousness beneath the words. “I need to find some fresh bandages for Kain’s leg.”

He hesitated only for a heartbeat, then gave a single, slow nod. He understood, even if every fibre of him wanted to be chasing pH levels and non-existant earthworms instead. His passion had never wavered—it was still there, fierce and necessary—but he knew what was needed right now. We couldn’t afford splinters in the foundation of this already fragile group.

“I’ll return quickly and help you,” I promised, the words soft but certain. Then, without thinking too much, I leaned forward and kissed him—a small, grounding kiss, light as breath but filled with all the weight of what we didn’t have time to say aloud. Love, yes. But more than that: solidarity.

In this place, that mattered just as much.