Highways and Portals

"Sometimes the straightest road is the strangest Portal."

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered under my breath, narrowing my eyes as Paul came barrelling towards me. Even at a distance, his energy radiated like static—bright, insistent, impossible to ignore. Normally, I might have been amused by his enthusiasm; today, it felt like someone had slipped an extra brick into the load I was already carrying.

“Beatrix!” he shouted, arms windmilling in exaggerated arcs as if I might otherwise mistake him for someone else. “Beatrix, wait up!”

A sigh escaped me—long, quiet, but weighted with that familiar thought: Is there ever any escape from Paul? It wasn’t that I disliked him. In fact, I valued his optimism more than I’d ever admit aloud. But sometimes, like now, I wanted five uninterrupted minutes to gather myself, to breathe without another urgent request hanging in the air.

“What is it?” I asked, keeping my voice level but letting a thread of impatience slip through. He skidded to a stop beside me, his breathing quick, eyes bright with that brand of urgency that made you feel guilty for wanting to walk away.

“Have you got Charlie yet?” he asked, anticipation so tangible it was almost another presence between us.

“Not yet, sorry. I’ve been distracted dealing with Gladys,” I admitted, the words coming out sharper than intended, though they carried the truth. My life lately seemed to be a rotation of other people’s emergencies, each one muscling in on the last.

“Oh, is she alright?” His concern came without hesitation, free of judgement—just genuine care. That part of Paul was disarming, and it reminded me why I put up with his constant intrusions.

“Yeah. She’s fine now,” I said, keeping it simple, though the truth was anything but.

“That’s good to hear,” Paul said, swiping a bead of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, his breathing finally beginning to settle. His relief seemed to sit lightly on him; mine was heavier, tangled with everything I hadn’t said.

An idea sparked as we spoke, sliding neatly into place as if it had been waiting for the right gap in the conversation. Paul’s presence, I realised, could actually be useful. For once.

“When you do see Luke,” I began, my voice measured, “can you please tell him that Gladys is safe and at home? She’s going to pack a few things and stay with our parents for a while until—” I stopped mid-sentence, my mind tightening its grip on the rest. No need to hand Paul the full weight of Gladys’s mess. Some burdens were better left unshared.

His expression sharpened with curiosity, but he didn’t press. Instead, he gave a small, deliberate nod. “Of course,” he said, the words carrying a quiet solidarity that made me momentarily glad I’d asked.

“Thank you,” I replied, offering a smile—half gratitude, half relief. In the chaos of the last few days, it was a strange comfort to find these small islands of cooperation, even if they came wrapped in Paul’s perpetual whirlwind.

“So, how far did you get?” he asked suddenly, snapping me out of the moment with the verbal equivalent of a hand clap.

“Get?” I echoed, my mind briefly caught between his words and the mental inventory I’d been running of what still needed doing.

“To Broken Hill?” he clarified, still brimming with that irrepressible energy, his hands sketching vague shapes in the air as if the journey might materialise between us.

“Oh.” A short scoff escaped me, part amusement at my own lapse, part irritation that the mission had slipped so easily from my focus. “I managed to get somewhere on the outskirts of Adelaide. I’ve left the hire car at my parents but registered the location near Adelaide first. I’m about to go to my parents to collect the car and then I’ll continue from where I left off,” I explained, the plan crystallising in my mind even as I spoke it aloud.

“That’s amazing that you can travel so easily like that,” Paul said, his tone tinged with something close to wonder. His eyes held that same flicker of fascination people get when they think they’re standing next to magic.

I couldn’t help but smile—broad, genuine, and edged with a private sense of satisfaction. “I know,” I said, the words carrying both a quiet pride and a faint awareness that this—of all the things in my life—was the part I could control.

As I considered the whirlwind of events, a sense of surrealism seeped in, curling through my thoughts like mist. The ability to leap across such vast distances and untangle—or at least attempt to untangle—a chain of crises in a single day felt lifted from the pages of speculative fiction. Yet here I was, not reading it, but living it.

In less than twenty-four hours, I’d gone from Hobart to Adelaide, doubled back to help Luke wrangle a critical fence delivery, plunged into the dripping green of Tasmania’s wilderness to pluck Gladys out of a police evasion that belonged on the evening news, and was now poised to reach Broken Hill. It was absurd. It was exhausting. And it was exactly what Guardianship seemed to demand—an unbroken readiness to pivot from the personal to the monumental without losing your footing.

The thought gave me pause, just a breath’s worth in the relentless march of my day. It wasn’t simply about covering ground or ticking off tasks—it was about carrying the weight of capability. Resilience wasn’t optional anymore; it was the currency of survival in this new world. The small ember of pride I felt was wrapped in the knowledge that such power came with a constant, inescapable ledger of responsibility.

“I’ll let you get going then,” Paul said, stepping back, his tone carrying an unusual note of restraint. He’d read the urgency in me and, for once, wasn’t trying to talk over it.

I turned to the Portal, feeling its low hum under my skin, that familiar anticipation before the leap. Then a thought caught in my mind like a snagged thread. “Make sure you keep the Portal clear. I need to drive the car in and out. Wouldn’t want to hit anybody.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Paul said, quick and certain—an immediate balm against the creeping image of some unfortunate Clivilian flattened by a hire car… again.

“Thanks.”

“And Beatrix?” His voice reached me just as I shifted my weight forward, one foot almost half in the next world.

“Yeah?” I paused, glancing over my shoulder.

“You should probably record several Portal locations on your journey. They may come in handy later,” Paul said, and for once his boundless energy was tempered by solid, practical foresight.

I gave a small nod. “Good idea. I’ll do that.”

“I recommend Burra and Yunta. If I ever need to stop on my way, they’re the usual places,” he added, grounding the suggestion in the everyday mechanics of long-distance travel.

“Got it,” I said, tucking the names away in my mental map as I finally stepped into the familiar confines of my bedroom—the transitional pause before the next leap forward. The air was still, quiet, almost ordinary, but I could feel the weight of the road ahead pressing against the other side of the Portal.

True to my word, I executed the manoeuvre with the hire car, guiding it through the Portal’s shimmering threshold. The surface rippled like disturbed water before swallowing the bonnet whole, and in a blink the familiar colours of Clivilius dissolved into the muted palette of Earth again. The transition was seamless—so seamless, in fact, that if not for the faint electric prickle running along my skin, it might have felt like nothing had happened at all. Technology and magic intertwined until they were no longer two separate things in my mind, just part of the strange machinery of my new normal.

I emerged precisely where I’d left off, the quiet outskirts of Gawler holding the same stillness as before, as if time had politely paused in my absence.

Settling back into the rhythm of the driver’s seat, I wrapped my hands around the wheel and felt the subtle tremor of the engine under my palms. The car hummed with life, the sound grounding me in the here and now.

As I merged onto the Barrier Highway, the tarmac stretched ahead in a long, unwavering ribbon—a promise and a challenge rolled into one.

The horizon was a faint, wavering line in the winter haze, the kind that made you feel both infinite and very, very small. With each kilometre, the suburbs melted away, replaced by sparse gum trees, skeletal fence lines, and the flat expanse of road that seemed to stretch into another lifetime.

Pressing down on the accelerator, I felt a ripple of exhilaration in my chest. This wasn’t just another drive; it was a straight shot into the unchartered outback, into the kind of landscape where things could happen—and often did—without anyone knowing for days.

“Broken Hill, here I come!” I declared, my voice cutting through the quiet cabin. It echoed back at me, half battle cry, half dry commentary on my own improbable life, the words fuelled by equal parts determination and the quiet thrill of heading into unknown territory.