Duck Egg Diplomacy

"The worst kind of manipulation isn't when they don't trust you—it's when they do, and you know exactly how you're going to use it."

I stared down at my trembling hands, watching them with the particular detachment of someone observing a specimen rather than their own body. The fine tremor running through my fingers seemed to belong to someone else—a stranger whose nervous system had been pushed past its tolerances and was now broadcasting distress signals I couldn't seem to switch off.

The house had yielded no intruder. I'd checked every room, every closet, every space large enough to conceal a human form, my heart hammering against my ribs with each door I opened. Nothing. No one hiding in shadows, no evidence of entry beyond that damned brochure with its cryptic message.

I'd eventually rationalised it as Cody's work—a peculiar gesture from a man whose relationship with normal social conventions had clearly eroded over decades of Guardian secrecy. He'd left the camping catalogue as a suggestion, perhaps. A way of communicating without the traceable footprint of phone calls or text messages. The conclusion brought little comfort, but it allowed me to regain enough focus to address the practical concerns that wouldn't wait for my anxiety to resolve itself.

The afternoon had been unexpectedly productive, if productivity could be measured in the accumulation of outdoor equipment and the gradual numbing of inconvenient emotions. The camping store had absorbed me for hours, its aisles of gear and gadgets designed for wilderness survival offering a strange kind of therapy. There was something almost meditative about evaluating sleeping bags by temperature rating, comparing portable stoves by fuel efficiency, selecting survival essentials with the careful attention of someone outfitting an expedition rather than a settlement in an alien dimension.

Each item I dropped into the trolley felt like a small victory against the chaos of the day. A quality first-aid kit. Water purification tablets. Compact cooking equipment that would work over open flames. Solar-powered lanterns that wouldn't require batteries we couldn't reliably resupply. The practical details of survival anchored me to something tangible, something I could control when so much else had spiralled beyond my grasp.

Transporting a portion of these supplies through the Portal had been surreal in the way that inter-dimensional travel remained surreal no matter how many times I did it—the familiar yet perpetually astonishing dissolution of one reality and emergence into another. The colours that existed between worlds still made my brain ache with their impossibility, still carried that particular vertigo of existing nowhere for the duration of the transit.

At the Drop Zone in Clivilius, I'd found evidence of progress that sparked something warm behind my sternum—a brief flicker of hope in the ash heap of the day. The pile of supplies I'd been accumulating had visibly diminished, carried off to wherever they were needed. Distant voices reached me on the currents of air, accompanied by the sounds of activity—hammering, conversation, the particular rhythms of people working together toward a common goal. They were making progress. The barren site was transforming, tent by tent, into something that might eventually deserve the name of community.

I hadn't stayed. Couldn't stay. Not with Jamie there, radiating the kind of cold fury that suggested our next conversation would involve more than just words. Not with Joel still lying in whatever impossible state of existence he now occupied. I'd deposited the supplies and retreated before anyone could see me, a coward's exit that I told myself was practical timing rather than avoidance.

Gladys's agreement to collect the remaining items with her hired truck had been another piece sliding into place. She'd asked few questions—either too exhausted from her own day to probe or simply grateful for the concrete task that let her contribute without confronting the larger mysteries we were all dancing around. I'd given her the store address, and the list of items still waiting for pickup. Simple logistics. The kind of transaction that didn't require anyone to acknowledge the strangeness of what we were actually doing.

The visit to the ATM had been another unexpected achievement. I'd withdrawn close to the daily maximum, watching the machine dispense crisp bills with impersonal efficiency. Money—mundane, terrestrial, utterly useless in Clivilius itself but essential for everything we needed to acquire on this side of the Portal. I'd stuffed the cash into my wallet with the particular satisfaction of someone building war chests for campaigns they couldn't fully articulate.

Yet despite these accomplishments, the tremor persisted. My hands shook as I stood at the kitchen bench, cataloguing the day's progress while the larger anxieties refused to be silenced.

Our settlement desperately needs Karen.

The thought returned with the insistence of a melody stuck on loop, simultaneously motivating and haunting. Karen Owen and her husband Chris represented something we couldn't manufacture or improvise—knowledge of how to make things grow. In a dimension of endless dust and uncertain resources, their expertise could mean the difference between a settlement that survived and one that slowly starved.

But the question of whether Karen would agree—whether she could agree, given what agreeing would mean—cast a long shadow over everything I was planning.

I'd known Karen for several years now, a connection that had germinated from the most mundane of daily rituals: our shared morning commute. The 6:45 bus from Berriedale to the city centre had thrown us together with the particular intimacy of regular proximity, faces that became familiar before names were ever exchanged. Jane—her best friend and eventually my friend too—had been the catalyst, the one who'd first broken the unwritten rules of public transport silence and actually struck up conversation.

That singular act of extroversion had knitted together an unlikely trio, bound by the rhythm of daily bus rides and the gradual unfolding of lives in those transient moments between home and work. We'd shared complaints about weather and traffic, celebrations of small victories, the particular comfort of seeing familiar faces in the anonymous churn of city commuting.

Karen and Chris had earned a certain esteem within the Tasmanian conservation community, champions of the island's wild beauty whose dedication extended far beyond casual appreciation. They didn't just love the bush—they fought for it, volunteering with land management programmes, rehabilitating degraded ecosystems, living the values that others merely professed. Many an early morning journey had been animated by Karen's tales of their latest expedition into wilderness, her enthusiasm infectious, her love for the outdoors written in the sun lines around her eyes and the calluses on her palms.

Their home in Collinsvale was a testament to their lifestyle—a charming cottage surrounded by generous expanses of land that bore the fruits of sustained labour. Karen's pride in their home-grown produce manifested in generous sharing: bags of vegetables so fresh the dirt still clung to their roots, the occasional clutch of duck eggs with shells in shades of blue and cream that made supermarket offerings look industrial by comparison. These gifts, simple yet profound, were tokens of a life lived with hands deep in actual earth, connected to the cycle of growth and renewal in ways that urban existence had severed for most of us.

The notion of cultivating anything in the vast stretches of Clivilian dust was beyond my personal expertise. I could open Portals to other dimensions, but I couldn't coax a tomato plant from seed to fruit. My teenage years in Broken Hill had taught me plenty about red dust, but nothing about making things flourish in it.

Yet in my mind's eye, I could almost see Karen transplanted into that alien landscape—her hands deep in soil that had never known terrestrial life, her brow furrowed with the particular determination she brought to every challenge, coaxing green from the barrenness through sheer bloody-minded refusal to accept failure. Her blend of obstinacy and practical knowledge wasn't just admirable; it was exactly what our fledgling settlement needed. If anyone could turn those desolate rust-coloured plains into something approaching a garden, it was her.

The biggest challenge loomed before me like a wall I couldn't see past. Convincing Karen and Chris to step through a Portal into an unknown world—to leave behind the property they'd built, the causes they championed, the life they'd constructed in Collinsvale—seemed to border on the impossible. How could I articulate the urgency without revealing too much? How could I present Clivilius as opportunity rather than exile? How could I invite them into something I wasn't even sure I understood myself?

And beneath those practical questions lurked something uglier: the recognition that I was planning yet another manipulation. Kain hadn't chosen to enter Clivilius—I'd pushed him through a Portal without consent, valued him as a resource rather than a person. Now here I was, calculating how to recruit Karen in much the same way, viewing her horticultural expertise as an asset to be acquired rather than a friend to be honestly informed.

When did I become someone who thinks about people this way?

The question arrived unwelcome, and I shelved it with the rest of the self-examination I didn't have capacity for today.

I reached for the whiskey bottle instead—the amber liquid promising what it always promised: a temporary softening of edges, a brief vacation from the relentless churning of anxiety and planning. The glass filled to its brim, the overhead light refracting through the surface in patterns that seemed almost hypnotic. With a swift motion, I downed the shot, feeling the familiar burn trace a path down my throat into my chest.

The heat spread outward, loosening something that had been clenched tight since I'd woken on the couch to find that brochure waiting for me. Not enough to silence the worry, but enough to proceed.

The clink of glass against bench marked the end of my brief respite. It was time to make the call—to lay groundwork, to begin the process of drawing Karen into a web she couldn't yet perceive.

I picked up the phone, my fingers hovering over Karen's contact with the particular hesitation of someone about to set something irreversible in motion. Then I pressed, and the decisiveness of the gesture sent an unexpected shiver down my spine.

The screen lit with Karen Owen's name, the ringtone pulsing through the kitchen in rhythmic reminder of the conversation I was about to navigate. Each ring felt elongated, stretched thin by anticipation and the particular dread that comes from knowing you're about to manipulate someone who trusts you.

When her voice finally broke through—distant but distinctly warm, carrying the background noise of public transport—a wave of relief momentarily displaced the anxiety.

I activated the loudspeaker. A deep breath. A gathering of the persona I needed to project: casual Luke, friendly Luke, definitely-not-plotting-to-uproot-your-life Luke.

"Hey, Karen," I projected something resembling my usual cheerfulness, striving to make the conversation feel normal despite the agenda lurking beneath its surface. "Can you hear me okay?"

"Yeah. You're a little soft, but I can hear you well enough," Karen's voice came through with the easy warmth of established friendship.

"Oh, good." The words were filler, buying time as I gathered my approach. My tongue traced the edges of my teeth in an old nervous habit, the taste of whiskey still coating my mouth.

The silence stretched, filled with the distant hum of the bus, the ambient noise of a life I was planning to interrupt irreversibly.

"I'm on the bus with Jane," Karen offered, the mundane detail grounding the conversation in ordinary reality.

"Oh, hi, Jane," I raised my voice slightly, performing the role of friendly acquaintance separated by technology. "She says hi," Karen relayed. "She says you're a slacker. We haven't seen you on the bus all week."

A chuckle escaped me—hollow enough that I hoped the phone's limited audio quality would mask its forced quality. "Ahh... yeah, I know. I've had the week off work."

The lie slid out with troubling smoothness. In truth, I hadn't been to work at all—had burned that bridge with a text message just hours ago. I hadn't been near the bus route, hadn't inhabited any of the normal spaces of my previous life. My days had been consumed by Portals and settlements and murdered sons who refused to stay dead.

"Fair enough then." Karen's response carried the easy acceptance of someone who had no reason to question, no framework for suspecting that her bus friend had become something stranger than she could imagine.

The silence that followed felt thick with everything I wasn't saying. I let it sit for a moment, then pushed forward toward the conversation's actual purpose.

"Are you busy tomorrow morning?"

Karen, ever the epitome of activity and purpose, would have her days scheduled with the particular fullness of someone who refused to waste time. Yet I knew her work schedule had reduced recently—something about restructuring at her office—and I clung to the hope that this might create the opening I needed.

Her response came with characteristic pragmatism. "Well, Chris and I have to make an early start in the morning to fix the small hole in the retaining wall. It keeps running mud underneath the backdoor when it rains." The domestic detail, so grounding and ordinary, contrasted sharply with the chaos that had become my normal. "But if you come over at nine, Chris might cook you up a fresh duck egg omelette."

My eyebrow arched with genuine surprise. Well, that was unexpected. Karen and Chris guarded their Collinsvale property with the particular protectiveness of people who'd created something precious and knew how easily precious things could be disturbed. Invitations to their home weren't casual offerings—they meant something.

The unexpected warmth of the gesture made what I was planning feel even worse.

"That'd be lovely," I managed, the words smooth despite the guilt curdling beneath them. I was accepting hospitality I planned to abuse, trading on friendship for purposes Karen couldn't begin to suspect.

"Okay. We'll see you around nine, then," Karen confirmed, her voice steady and utterly unaware of the undertow she'd stepped into.

"Okay, bye," I echoed, the farewell emerging with perhaps too much haste—a part of me eager to escape before I said something that revealed my hand.

The moment the call disconnected, a sigh escaped my lips with the force of pressure finally released. The conversation had been smoother than anticipated, the invitation secured with unexpected ease. Yet as the relief ebbed away, fresh anxiety crashed in to fill the vacuum.

The phone call had been merely a prelude. A stepping stone toward the real challenge that awaited at their cottage tomorrow morning—the careful work of introducing impossibility to people who inhabited the realm of the practical, of planting seeds that would eventually uproot their entire existence.

The whiskey bottle called from its position on the bench, a siren promising temporary escape from the mounting weight of what I was becoming. I poured another shot, and as I raised the glass to my lips, a strawberry seed dislodged itself from between my teeth—a trivial reminder of something I'd eaten earlier, a fragment of a day that had contained normal moments before spiralling into its current chaos.

The liquid burned its way down, familiar and welcome, a fleeting respite as I braced for tomorrow. A meeting that held the potential to change everything—for Karen, for Chris, for the settlement that needed what they could offer.

And for me, another stone laid in the path I was building toward something I still couldn't fully name.