How Will They Know Who They Are?

"Lying in the dark next to my brother's boyfriend, I finally understood what Rose meant about the ducks—things need names or they're just emptiness pretending to be something real."

I lay quietly on the mattress, the fabric slightly rough against my skin, a tactile reminder of just how far we'd fallen from the world of thread counts and Egyptian cotton. The darkness in the tent was absolute — that starless, moonless void we'd discovered earlier pressing in through the canvas as if it wanted to consume us. Jamie's soft snores provided a counterpoint to the silence, a rhythm that was both comforting and strange. I'd never shared a bed with anyone but Claire, and before her, no one at all. The closeness was unfamiliar, yet in this unfamiliar environment, even the small warmth radiating from another human body was a comfort not to be underestimated.

A single pillow lay between us, a meagre boundary marker that underscored our shared predicament. It was all we could spare, and though such a small inconvenience would have been laughable yesterday, the necessity of sharing a single blanket seemed to amplify both the intimacy and the discomfort of our situation. Two grown men, one of them my brother's partner, huddled together for warmth in an barren wasteland. If someone had described this scenario to me a week ago, I would have laughed them out of the room.

The thought crossed my mind, not for the first time tonight, that Luke could have at least provided us with two blankets. The oversight seemed minor in the grand scheme of our survival — what was one blanket against the impossibility of everything else? — but in the quiet of the night, such small comforts took on greater significance. They became the difference between feeling human and feeling like a refugee in your own existence.

I made a mental note, firm in my resolve, to ensure that Luke brought additional bedding with the new tents tomorrow. Pillows. Blankets. Perhaps a proper sleeping bag. The darkness made writing down this reminder impossible, leaving me to rely on a memory that often proved frustratingly unreliable — especially when exhaustion pulled at every corner of my mind like children tugging at a parent's sleeve.

Children.

The word unlocked something inside me, and suddenly my mind was no longer in this tent, on this mattress, in this impossible place.

What would never escape my memory were images of my kids. They played across the canvas of my closed eyelids like scenes from a film I'd watched a thousand times and would never tire of watching. Mack and Rose, running around the Zinc Lakes back home in Broken Hill, their laughter echoing against the backdrop of the churning mines that had defined our town for generations. I could see them so clearly — Mack with his serious face breaking into unexpected grins, Rose with her gap-toothed smile and the way she ran with her arms windmilling as if she might take flight at any moment.

The vivid green of the grass underfoot — real grass, Earth grass, the kind that stained your knees and smelled of summer — and the playful chase of mallard ducks that scattered in mock alarm whenever Rose got too close. She loved those ducks with a ferocity that bordered on obsession, naming each one despite my gentle reminders that wild animals weren't pets.

"But Daddy," she'd said once, her face scrunched in that expression of childish certainty, "how will they know who they are if nobody calls them by their names?"

I could almost feel the mist of the water fountain on my face now, a fleeting respite from the relentless heat of the midday sun. The way the light caught the droplets and scattered them into tiny rainbows. The way Mack would pretend to be too old for such things but would inevitably end up soaked alongside his sister, laughing despite himself.

And then there was Claire.

My thoughts shifted to her — sporadic, lively, troubled Claire. My wife of nine years, the woman I'd loved since high school, the mother of my children. The woman whose eyes had held such cold fury the last time I'd seen her.

The memory that surfaced was not a pleasant one, tinged with the sharpness of our final argument. I could see it clearly now: the bedroom window, the rose bush outside. Claire standing with her back to the light, her silhouette rigid with anger, her words falling like hammer blows.

The argument, centred around my habitual prioritisation of work over family, had been abruptly cut short by Luke's call. At the time, it had seemed like a reprieve — an escape from the immediate conflict, a chance to step away before I said something I couldn't take back. I'd answered the phone with something close to relief, grateful for the interruption even as Claire's expression hardened into something worse than anger: disappointment.

But now, lying here in the darkness, the question of whether that interruption had been fortunate gnawed at me like a rat at rope. That very call — that moment of seeming rescue — was the reason I found myself in this current predicament. Far from home. Far from the unresolved tensions with Claire. Immeasurably far from my children's laughter and the chance to prove that I could do better, be better, be the husband and father they deserved.

The irony was not lost on me. In my attempt to escape the difficulties of one aspect of my life, I had been thrust into an entirely new set of challenges — ones that made our marital problems seem trivial by comparison. What I wouldn't give now for a heated argument in our living room. What I wouldn't give for the chance to apologise, to promise to change, to hold her and mean it.

But even as I thought this, I wondered: would I have changed? Or would I have fallen back into the same patterns, the same excuses, the same gradual drift away from the people who mattered most? The question was unanswerable now, which somehow made it worse. I would never know what kind of husband I might have become. I only knew what kind of husband I had been, and that knowledge sat heavy in my chest.

The realisation that these memories — both sweet and painful — would never leave me was both a comfort and a curse. They were a link to a world I had been forcibly ripped from, a constant reminder of what I was fighting to return to. Yet they also underscored the profound isolation of my current situation, the physical and emotional distance that lay between me and the life I knew.

Rose's laughter. Mack's serious eyes. Claire's disappointed silence. The green grass of Zinc Lakes. The window. The roses. The thorns.

All of it felt impossibly distant now, as if it had happened to someone else — a different Paul Smith who lived in a different universe where portals didn't exist and alien wastelands were the stuff of science fiction.

And yet.

Despite the deep yearning within me to hold my children again, to feel their warmth and hear their voices, a part of me was also becoming increasingly resolved to face our current reality head-on. I couldn't change what had happened. I couldn't undo Luke's call or my decision to follow him or the Portal's rejection of my return. What I could do — what I had to do — was survive. Build. Make something of this place that wasn't just an extended death sentence.

The idea of making this new settlement work began to take root in my mind, an unexpected sprout of determination amid the desolation of Clivilius. If we were going to be stuck here, we would do more than merely exist. We would create something. Something that might, one day, be worth having.

Settlement...

The word echoed in my thoughts, highlighting its anonymity, its lack of identity. We had a tent and a mattress and a fire pit and a lagoon nearby. We had two men and a promise of more supplies tomorrow. But what we didn't have was a name. A way to refer to this place that wasn't just "here" or "the camp" or "this godforsaken patch of dust."

It needs a name.

The realisation brought a sense of purpose, however small, to our plight. Names mattered. I'd learned that in business — you couldn't sell something that didn't have an identity, couldn't build loyalty to a concept that existed only as a description. And I'd learned it as a father too, watching Rose insist on naming those ducks at Zinc Lakes.

How will they know who they are if nobody calls them by their names?

I let my thoughts drift, allowing the mental exhaustion and the emotional turmoil of the day to wash over me. My eyelids fluttered several times, heavy with fatigue, as they fought for the rest they so desperately sought. The darkness behind my closed eyes became a canvas for my thoughts, a space where the practicalities of survival mingled with the more abstract notions of home and belonging.

What would we call this place? Something that captured its desolation but also its potential. Something that acknowledged where we'd come from but also what we might become. Something that—

"Bixbus!"

The name erupted from me, unintentionally aloud, breaking the silence of the night. The sound of it seemed to hang in the air, a tangible manifestation of my subconscious efforts to anchor us to this place. Jamie's snoring hitched for a moment before resuming, undisturbed by my outburst.

Yes.

I thought this time, more deliberately, embracing the name fully.

Bixbus.

It had a strange ring to it, unfamiliar yet oddly fitting for our new home. I couldn't have told you where it came from — what combination of sounds and syllables and half-remembered fragments had collided in my exhausted brain to produce this particular word. But it felt right in a way I couldn't explain. Like it had been waiting for me to find it. Like the place itself had whispered its true name into my ear while I lay on the edge of sleep.

The act of naming it felt like a small victory, a way of claiming a piece of this world as our own. Imposing order on the chaos that had been thrust upon us. Making something real out of something that had, until this moment, been nothing more than circumstance.

Bixbus.

Our settlement. Our home. Our future, whether we wanted it or not.

I let the name settle into my mind, feeling its weight and its promise. Tomorrow I would tell Jamie. Tomorrow I would tell Luke. Tomorrow we would begin the work of turning this nameless patch of dust into something worth fighting for.

But tonight, I would let myself remember. The green grass. The laughing children. The roses and the thorns. The life I had lived and the life I had lost and the life I might yet build from the ashes of both.

Sleep, when it finally came, was neither peaceful nor restful. But it came. And in the morning, there would be work to do.

There would always be work to do.