How Hard Can It Be

"There's something almost noble about attempting construction projects with nothing but enthusiasm and ignorance—or at least that's what I told myself as I confiscated the pickaxe before Paul murdered one of us."

The return to camp was marked by a sense of solitude that I hadn't realised I was craving.

The sun, high and unrelenting, had done its work well during my walk back from the lagoon. My clothes clung to my body with that peculiar dampness that wasn't quite wet and wasn't quite dry—the liminal state of fabric that had been soaked and was now being baked by heat I could feel pressing down on my scalp and shoulders. The warmth seeped into my skin, a natural remedy to the chill of the lagoon's embrace, though nothing could quite dispel the strange sensation that lingered in my limbs. That feeling of being touched by something I couldn't see. Of being changed in ways I couldn't articulate.

As I navigated through the tent's flap, pushing aside the canvas that served as our inadequate door, the absence of Paul was a silent relief. The space felt different without another person occupying it—larger somehow, more breathable, as though Paul's presence had been taking up more than just physical room. It afforded me a moment of privacy, a chance to collect my thoughts and steel myself for whatever lay ahead.

Whatever the hell had happened at the lagoon, I wasn't ready to discuss it with anyone. The glowing particles. The voice in my head. The promise of new life from an entity I couldn't see but could feel pressing against the edges of my consciousness. It all felt too raw, too strange, too intimate to share.

Glancing down at my boardshorts, their vibrant blue hue seemed almost defiant against the backdrop of Clivilius's muted browns and golds. They bore no trace of my earlier descent into the lagoon's depths—no visible evidence of what I'd done in those waters, of the release I'd surrendered to, of the bizarre transformation I'd witnessed afterward.

Nevertheless, driven by a need for caution that bordered on paranoia, I quickly changed into a fresh pair. The action felt necessary—ritual cleansing, perhaps, or simply the desire to erase any lingering evidence of my moment of surrender. My fingers fumbled with the damp fabric, peeling it away from my thighs, and I kicked the discarded shorts into the corner of the tent where they could dry without attracting questions.

The burn on my chest caught my attention as I stood bare for a moment in the tent's dim interior. The darkened skin between my pecs throbbed with its own heartbeat. I traced its edges gently with my fingertips, wincing at the tenderness, wondering how much longer I could hide it. The coal had branded me more deeply than I'd initially thought—a souvenir from the storm that I carried invisibly beneath my clothes.

With Paul presumably still busy at the Drop Zone, I found myself alone under the shade of the canopy. It was a brief respite from the sun's scrutiny, a moment to gather my thoughts and brace for the afternoon's assault. The heat would only intensify as the day progressed, and whatever energy I'd recovered during my time at the lagoon would be tested by the hours ahead.

Taking a deep breath—feeling it catch slightly as my chest expanded against the burned tissue—I steeled myself for the inevitable return to the sun's domain.

The walk to the Drop Zone was a meditative experience unlike anything I'd felt in recent memory.

Each step kicked up small clouds of dust that caught the light in a dance of particles, golden motes swirling and settling in patterns that seemed almost intentional. There was a simplicity to the rhythm—left foot, right foot, left foot again—that felt therapeutic in its mindlessness. My shoes, caked with the same ubiquitous dust that coated everything in this place, became the architects of these miniature disturbances, each impact creating tiny storms that rose and fell in the space of a heartbeat.

The landscape stretched before me in its endless sameness—brown earth, golden dust, the occasional rock formation breaking the monotony like punctuation marks in an otherwise featureless sentence. The mountains in the distance remained stubbornly fixed, never seeming to grow closer no matter how far I walked.

As I journeyed, something strange happened. The weight of recent events—the confession to Luke, the unexpected kiss, the Portal's rejection, the lagoon's bizarre embrace—seemed to lift slightly. Not disappear, exactly, but recede to a manageable distance where I could observe them without being crushed by their presence. A childlike sense of wonder took their place, filling the space they'd occupied with something lighter.

My mind, usually a battleground of anxieties and recriminations, drifted aimlessly. Thoughts arrived and departed without demanding attention—memories of Tasmania, fragments of conversations, the taste of the pizza we'd eaten that first night. I let them pass through me like weather, neither grasping nor resisting, simply noticing their presence before they moved on.

It was an unusual state for me, this acceptance of mental drift. I was accustomed to directing my thoughts, to analysing and planning and worrying about what might go wrong next. The constant vigilance had become so habitual that its absence felt almost disorienting—like suddenly noticing that a sound you'd been unconsciously filtering had stopped, leaving silence that rang louder than the noise.

For the first time in what felt like forever, I allowed myself to simply be. To exist in the moment without the constant pressure to understand, predict, or control. The sun beat down on my shoulders. The dust rose around my ankles. My feet carried me forward without requiring guidance. And somewhere in the depths of my mind, Clivilius's promise echoed faintly—new life, new life, new life—like a half-remembered song I couldn't quite place.

It was a freeing sensation. A release from the internal warfare that had become my constant companion. I didn't know how long it would last, didn't trust it to persist beyond this walk, but for now, I accepted the gift of temporary peace.

As I neared the Drop Zone, the glare of the sun forced me to narrow my eyes, squinting against the brightness as I scanned the horizon for any sign of activity. The landscape shimmered with heat haze, distorting the distant shapes into wavering mirages that could have been anything or nothing at all.

My gaze settled on a solitary figure seated in the dust, a small distance away from a conspicuously large rectangular box. Paul sat motionless, his attention fixed on the object before him with an intensity that seemed almost unnatural. He didn't move as I approached. Didn't shift his weight or turn his head or give any indication that he was aware of my presence.

What is Paul doing?

The question formed in my mind as I observed his stillness. His body was present—physically occupying space in the dust of Clivilius—but something about his posture suggested his consciousness had wandered elsewhere entirely. He sat cross-legged, shoulders slightly hunched, gaze locked on the image printed on the side of the box with the kind of focus usually reserved for religious contemplation.

Could he be in some sort of trance?

The thought seemed almost plausible given the unwavering quality of his attention. We'd all experienced strange things in this place—voices, visions, moments of disconnection from reality that defied easy explanation. Perhaps Paul had been touched by whatever force animated Clivilius, drawn into some communion with the entity that held us prisoner.

But as the scene before me became clearer, a chuckle escaped me. The truth was far more mundane than mystical visitation. Paul wasn't caught in any supernatural reverie; he was simply zoned out. Lost in thought, or perhaps overwhelmed by the vastness of our predicament, his mind had wandered away from his body and left behind an empty vessel staring at a cardboard box.

It was a sight I was familiar with, having seen Luke in similar states of detachment countless times over the years we'd been together. That distant look, the vacant eyes, the complete absence from the present moment—it was a family trait, apparently. Luke would do the same thing, disappearing into his own head while the world around him continued without his participation. I'd learned to recognise the signs: the slight slackness in the jaw, the unfocused quality of the gaze, the way their bodies seemed to operate on autopilot while their minds explored territories invisible to everyone else.

"Hey! You actually going to do anything with that besides stare at it all day?"

I called out, letting amusement colour my voice. The words were designed to snap Paul back to the present, to break whatever spell of abstraction had claimed him.

Another soft chuckle escaped me as Paul jolted at the sound—his body jerking with the startled reflex of someone yanked suddenly from deep sleep. His head whipped around, eyes widening as they struggled to process my presence, to reconcile the interruption with whatever internal landscape he'd been inhabiting.

Turning rapidly, Paul's body twisted to face me, his features cycling through confusion, recognition, and mild embarrassment in quick succession. "Umm. I'm not really sure," he admitted, his response tinged with the disorientation of someone still surfacing from their own thoughts.

I stepped closer, curiosity drawing me toward the contents of the Drop Zone that had captivated Paul so completely. The area we'd marked out with rocks earlier had been transformed in my absence—what had been empty space was now cluttered with boxes and bags and equipment that Luke must have delivered while I was at the lagoon.

"It's a lot of stuff," I remarked, my voice carrying genuine surprise as my gaze swept over the assortment before us. Large bags of cement were stacked in neat rows, their weight evident in the way they'd compressed into the dust beneath them. A variety of garden tools leaned against one another—shovels, rakes, a pickaxe. A conspicuous red tool trolley stood off to one side, its drawers presumably filled with equipment I couldn't see.

It was a tangible representation of Luke's efforts—and now Paul's vision—to carve out some semblance of settlement in this strange place. Not just survival supplies, but building materials. Infrastructure. The raw components of civilisation waiting to be assembled by hands that might not know how to use them.

The realisation that I was genuinely impressed caught me off guard. I'd been so focused on escaping, on rejecting everything about Clivilius and our imprisonment here, that I hadn't fully appreciated what Luke and Paul had been working toward. They'd moved past resistance and into construction, past denial and into acceptance. Whether I agreed with their approach or not, there was something admirable about the sheer scale of their ambition.

My attention finally settled on the box that had ensnared Paul's focus. The image on its side depicted a large, green shed—one of those prefabricated structures that came flat-packed with instructions and promises of easy assembly. The kind of thing that looked simple in the picture but probably required skills and tools we didn't possess.

No wonder Paul's perplexed.

The thought crossed my mind with sudden understanding. This wasn't just a box. It was a challenge. A test of capabilities we'd never been asked to demonstrate before. Looking at that picture of the completed shed, all clean lines and proper angles, and then looking at the reality of our situation—two men who'd never built anything more complex than IKEA furniture, stranded in an alien dimension with nothing but determination and ignorance—Paul's paralysis made perfect sense.

"What?"

The question slipped out as I noticed Paul's gaze had shifted from the box to me. His expression held inquiry mixed with something that looked almost like concern, his eyes tracking across my face as though searching for something.

Paul's response was almost reflexive, his eyes blinking rapidly before he attempted to steer toward safer conversational ground. "So, how was your walk?"

The question was casual, innocent, but it carried undertones I wasn't prepared to address. My walk. My time at the lagoon. The things I'd done there, the things I'd experienced, the promises I'd been made by a voice that seemed to emanate from the water itself.

"Fine," I replied, the word clipped and final. A door closing on further inquiry.

"Find anything interesting?" he prodded further, his curiosity apparently undeterred by my brevity.

"Mmm, not really." The noncommittal answer was the best I could offer. The lagoon, with its unnerving yet cathartic embrace, wasn't something I was prepared to discuss. Not now. Perhaps not ever. Some experiences were too personal, too strange, too potentially revealing to share with anyone—even someone I was beginning to trust.

The silence that followed was familiar, neither uncomfortable nor demanding.

"The lagoon is nice," I ventured after a moment, offering a fragment of my experience without revealing the turmoil it had momentarily eased. A peace offering of sorts. An acknowledgment that I had, in fact, been somewhere worth visiting.

"It is," Paul agreed, his nod a simple acceptance of the lagoon's tranquil allure. He didn't press for details, didn't demand elaboration. Just accepted what I was willing to give and let the rest remain private.

My gaze returned to the box and then swept over the Drop Zone, now cluttered with boxes of varying sizes, each one a promise of labour and adaptation. Bags of cement. Garden tools. The mysterious contents of the red tool trolley. Materials for projects that hadn't yet been conceived, waiting to be transformed into something useful.

It looks like a lot of work.

The realisation dawned with a weight I could almost feel settling on my shoulders. Transforming these raw materials into something meaningful—shelter, infrastructure, the foundations of whatever settlement Paul envisioned—would require effort I wasn't sure I had left to give. Every box would need to be opened. Every item would need to be assessed, organised, deployed. Every project would demand physical labour that my burned chest and exhausted body might not be able to provide.

And yet, surrounded by the tangible evidence of Luke and Paul's determination to persevere, something that felt almost like purpose stirred in my gut. Not enthusiasm, exactly. Not acceptance. But perhaps a grudging acknowledgment that sitting idle wasn't an option, that doing nothing was its own form of slow death in a place like this.

"So..." Paul's voice trailed off, a hint of pride mixed with uncertainty as he gestured toward the array of materials and tools scattered around us. "This is pretty much everything from the first list that I gave Luke."

Hearing this, my initial surprise morphed into something approaching genuine admiration. My eyebrow raised—a silent acknowledgment of their efforts that spoke louder than any words I might have offered.

"Really? You've both actually done a really good job."

The words emerged before I fully registered the depth of my own approval. I meant them, though. Whatever reservations I had about their plans, whatever resistance I still harboured toward accepting our imprisonment, I couldn't deny the accomplishment represented by this collection of supplies. They'd coordinated across dimensions. They'd planned and procured and delivered. They'd turned ideas into reality.

Paul chuckled, a sound that carried relief and self-deprecation in equal measure. "You sound surprised."

"Well," I confessed, my gaze sweeping once more over the Drop Zone—this tangible manifestation of their determination to make the best of our situation. "You've managed to get us all this stuff, but do you actually know what to do with any of it?"

The question hung in the air, pointed but not unkind.

"Guessing from the way you've been staring at the picture on the box for so long, I'd guess you've got no clue."

Caught off guard by my directness, Paul's response was a mixture of hesitation and reluctant acknowledgment. His mouth opened, closed, opened again as he searched for words that might salvage his dignity.

"Umm... well..." he stammered, before finally conceding with sheepish honesty. "No, not really."

Figured. The thought formed with dry amusement rather than malice. He's just as not-so-handy as his brother.

The Smith brothers, for all their intelligence and ambition, apparently shared a common blind spot when it came to practical construction. Luke could navigate between dimensions but couldn't assemble furniture without leftover parts. Paul could envision civilisations but couldn't build a shed. It was almost endearing, in a way that made me want to both laugh and despair.

"But really, how hard can it be to put a few sheds together?" Paul mused aloud, his optimism apparently undeterred by his own admitted ignorance. The question was rhetorical, the kind of thing people said before discovering exactly how hard something could be.

His words prompted me to take a closer look at the shed's picture, considering my own skills—or lack thereof—in such projects. I'd done some things over the years. Nothing impressive, nothing professional, but enough to know the basics of making one thing connect to another.

I've cut and laid tiles, wallpapered several walls, and built some very rustic stone steps. But a shed?

The complexity of the task suddenly felt all too real. A shed wasn't just walls and a roof. It was foundations and frames and measurements that actually mattered. It was right angles and level surfaces and joints that would hold against weather and time. It was everything I'd never been trained to do.

"I think we're a bit fucked," I stated, the blunt assessment hanging heavily between us.

Paul's loud groan cut through—a sound of frustration and acceptance rolled into one long exhalation.

"But..." I continued, pausing to gather my thoughts and perhaps offer a glimmer of hope amidst our shared apprehension. There had to be something we could do. Some first step that would at least create the illusion of progress. "But I do know that before we can start working on the shed, we need to pour the concrete foundations."

It was a small piece of knowledge—barely more than common sense, really—but in that moment it felt like a crucial insight. A direction. A place to begin.

"Of course," Paul's response was quick, filled with renewed determination as he pushed himself up to stand. His eyes sparkled with the particular brightness of someone who'd been given permission to act. "Let's get this started then."

His eagerness was both endearing and slightly alarming. The speed with which he moved toward the first bag of cement suggested enthusiasm untempered by caution—the dangerous combination of motivation without expertise.

"Hang on a sec," I interjected, my hand reaching out to grasp Paul's arm just as he moved toward the supplies. Urgency coloured my voice, a need to pause and consider before we committed to a course of action we couldn't undo.

"What?" Paul's confusion was evident, his head tilting in that way people do when they're caught between momentum and instruction.

"Have you ever actually laid concrete before?"

Paul's response was a shake of the head, confirmation of what I'd already suspected. "No."

With a sigh that carried the weight of resignation and reluctant responsibility, I pushed past him. If this was going to be done, it would have to be done properly—or at least as properly as two amateurs could manage.

I grabbed the first bag of cement myself, my arms protesting as the weight settled against my chest. The burn flared with immediate complaint, a sharp reminder that I wasn't operating at full capacity. I ignored it, turning the bag over to scrutinise the instructions printed on the back in small, unhelpful text.

We really are fucked.

The realisation hit with renewed force as I scanned the sparse directions. The instructions assumed knowledge we didn't possess, skipping over fundamentals in favour of mixing ratios and curing times. Nothing about site preparation. Nothing about depth requirements. Nothing about the hundred things that probably needed to happen before any concrete got poured.

Yet I was acutely aware of Paul's gaze on me—expectant, trusting, waiting for guidance I wasn't qualified to provide.

Foolish?

Most likely.

But for now, I accepted the role I had unwittingly assumed. Someone had to pretend to know what they were doing. Might as well be me.

"What's it say?" Paul's impatience broke through my thoughts, his voice carrying hope that I was desperately trying to justify.

"Not much," I admitted, the instructions offering little comfort to either of us. "It only explains how to mix the concrete. But I am pretty sure we need to prep the ground first."

The words were spoken with a confidence I didn't feel—a façade of knowledge constructed over a foundation of guesswork. But Paul didn't need to know that. He needed direction, purpose, something to do that would make him feel like we were making progress.

"Oh." Paul's reaction was subdued as he turned to survey the tools and materials scattered around us. His eyes moved from item to item, searching for something that might bridge the gap between our ignorance and the task ahead.

Then, with a spark of optimism that seemed characteristic of his nature, he suggested: "We can use the pickaxe to dig the foundation hole."

The suggestion was made with hopeful uncertainty—a clutch at straws dressed up as a plan. The words didn't quite fit together in any construction context I was familiar with, but there was logic buried somewhere in there. You probably did need to dig something before you poured concrete into it.

"Now you just sound like you're throwing words together," I couldn't help but laugh, the absurdity of our situation momentarily lightening the mood.

"Yeah. I kinda am," Paul conceded, his broad smile infectious despite everything. He moved to pick up the pickaxe, his movements lacking any real sense of purpose beyond the desire to do something—anything—that felt productive.

"We may as well give it a try," he said, brandishing the pickaxe with enthusiasm that was both reckless and somehow heartening.

Standing there, watching Paul wave the tool around with misplaced confidence, I felt a mixture of trepidation and unexpected camaraderie. We were out of our depth. Completely, utterly, hopelessly out of our depth. And yet there was something about facing this challenge together—about attempting the impossible with nothing but ignorance and determination—that felt profoundly human.

In the vast, unforgiving expanse of Clivilius, we were about to embark on a project that was likely doomed from the start. The shed would probably lean. The foundation would probably crack. Whatever we built would probably need to be rebuilt by someone who actually knew what they were doing.

But in that moment, none of it mattered. Paul was determined to try, to make this alien place a little more like home, one misguided step at a time. And despite myself, I was going to help him.

"You'd better let me do the digging," I suggested, narrowly avoiding another of his enthusiastic but hazardous swings. The pickaxe whooshed past my shoulder close enough to feel the displaced air, and I reached out to pry it from his grasp before he took out one of my eyes.

"You're already crippled," I pointed out, nodding toward his injured foot. The words came out lighter than I felt, an attempt to keep the mood from tipping into the heaviness that always seemed to lurk at the edges of our conversations.

As we stood at the edge of the Drop Zone, contemplating our next move, the vastness of our surroundings became even more apparent. The landscape stretched in every direction—empty, unmarked, waiting to be claimed. We could put structures anywhere. We could build in any configuration, oriented toward any point on the compass. The freedom was almost paralysing.

"Where do you want it?" I asked, ready to get started but wanting to ensure Paul felt ownership over the decisions that would shape our little corner of Clivilius.

Paul joined me in surveying the possibilities, his gaze sweeping across the expanse with the look of someone trying to impose mental order on chaos. "We could put the sheds anywhere, really," he mused, the truth of the statement both liberating and overwhelming.

I pressed him for more consideration. "Think, Paul. It has to be practical."

The urging wasn't criticism—it was guidance. I recognised the importance of planning, of thinking through consequences before committing to irreversible decisions. But I was also adamant that Paul's input should lead our choices. This was his vision, his dream of civilisation. If I was going to help build it, it would be on his terms.

Paul paused, visibly working through the options. When he spoke again, his voice had the quality of someone thinking aloud, testing ideas against reality.

"Well... If they were near the Drop Zone, we wouldn't need to carry items too far."

He paused, considering the implications.

"Oh, yes, but then we'd still need to carry stuff to the campsite, which is where it'd most likely be required."

I could see the wheels turning in his head—the dawning recognition that every choice created new problems even as it solved old ones.

"... near the campsite, someone would need to move stuff there initially, but it would be closer and easier access for everyone else."

"Everyone else?"

I couldn't help but interject, my thoughts momentarily breaking free from their contemplative loop. The phrase caught me off guard, its implications spreading outward like ripples from an unexpected disturbance.

There's only two of us here.

Paul's grand visions of building a new civilisation—of "everyone else" who might benefit from well-placed sheds—seemed both endearing and concerning in their ambition. He was planning for a future populated by people who didn't exist, infrastructure for a community that might never form.

And I'm really not sure that I like it.

The thought surfaced with uncomfortable clarity. I'd been resisting Clivilius since the moment I'd learned I couldn't leave. Every fibre of my being was oriented toward escape, toward returning to the life I'd been dragged away from. Paul's planning for permanence felt like a betrayal of that resistance—an acceptance I wasn't ready to offer.

But this wasn't the moment for that argument.

Determined, Paul made his decision with the kind of certainty that suggested the internal debate was over. "We're building the sheds near the campsite."

"Okay then," I acquiesced, choosing not to voice the objections crowding my thoughts.

I grabbed the shovel and began the trek back to camp, dragging the tools behind me. The metal scraped against the ground, leaving twin furrows in the dust—visible evidence of our commitment to this new plan, whatever I might think of its underlying assumptions.