No Stars, No Moon

"Luke brought pizza and Chardonnay like we were camping instead of exiled, and for a few bites I almost forgot I had children waiting for a father who'd never come home."

Pushing back the tent flap, I was momentarily blinded by the harshness of the bright afternoon daylight. After the dim interior of our canvas shelter, the Clivilian sun struck my eyes like a spotlight. Instinctively, my hand came up to shield my face from the glare, fingers spread wide to filter the light into something bearable.

The warmth of the lagoon still lingered beneath my skin, a residual hum that I couldn't quite shake. The memory of that experience—the water's embrace, the voice that had whispered my name, the pleasure that had crested through me like a wave—felt almost dreamlike now, yet my body remembered. My body remembered too well.

"Now, where's Jamie?" Luke's voice reached me, grounding and familiar, as he approached the tent. He carried pizza boxes—actual pizza boxes, their cardboard surfaces so aggressively normal they seemed almost absurd. The sight of them momentarily displaced the lagoon from my thoughts.

"He's gone to bathe." I replied, and despite everything, a hint of pride crept into my voice as I recounted my discovery. "I found a nice lagoon just around the riverbend."

My smile broadened at the memory, even as something deeper stirred beneath the surface of that smile. The lagoon had been an unexpected treasure in the midst of this barren, unforgiving wilderness—a small haven of tranquillity and a rare luxury that seemed almost designed for solitary discovery. The pleasure of the water, so intense and deeply personal, had been an experience that felt sacred in its privacy. The thought of sharing it, even with my brother, brought a complex tangle of emotions I wasn't prepared to untangle.

I shifted uncomfortably, the mere recollection of the water's embrace stirring a warmth within me that was distinctly ill-suited for brotherly company. The lagoon had awakened something, and that something wasn't interested in propriety.

"I'll have to check it out tomorrow."

Luke's voice pulled me back from the dangerous territory of my reverie. I found myself shifting my weight again, an awkward attempt to adjust to the persistent physical response my thoughts had provoked. The sensual memories of the lagoon refused to be dismissed, lingering like a melody that plays on loop in the back of your mind.

"Mmm, smells delicious!"

The words escaped me before I could rein in my senses, my attention abruptly captured by the scent emanating from the pizza boxes Luke was carrying. It was an olfactory assault in the best possible sense—cheese and tomato and pepperoni, the accumulated aromas of a thousand takeaway nights condensed into this single, perfect moment. For a heartbeat, all thoughts of the lagoon were swept away by the tantalising promise of familiar comfort, a taste of normalcy in the midst of our extraordinary circumstances.

I almost lunged towards Luke, drawn by the irresistible aroma like a moth to flame, my nose eagerly tracing the air above the boxes as if to capture every nuance of the scent. The hunger I'd been suppressing all day—the hunger I hadn't even acknowledged—roared to sudden, demanding life.

Taking the boxes from him, we made our way together to the small campfire. The flames had settled to a steady crackle, the ring of stones Jamie had arranged creating a perfect gathering point for what suddenly felt like an occasion. The thought of sharing a meal, especially one as unexpectedly luxurious as pizza, felt like a small victory against the crushing strangeness of our situation.

By this point, the pervasive dust of Clivilius had made its claim on everything. It coated our skin, our clothes, the very air we breathed. Resistance seemed not just futile but exhausting. So, with a resigned air that would have horrified the Paul Smith of yesterday, I plonked myself down onto the ground. The fine particles puffed up around me in a small cloud that I no longer had the energy to resent. It seemed petty, now, to fuss over the omnipresent dust when there were far more pressing concerns at hand—like the gnawing emptiness of my stomach that had suddenly become the loudest voice in my head.

"I'll get you some chairs tomorrow." Luke offered, squatting down beside me with a practicality that was both comforting and slightly amusing given our surroundings. Chairs. As if we were planning a proper campsite, a proper life here in this proper place.

"That'd be nice." I responded, though my mind was only half on the conversation. The thought of chairs, while appealing in the abstract, paled in comparison to the immediate, visceral need clawing at my belly. My stomach underscored this point with a loud gurgle, as if to chastise me for even considering abstract future comforts when there was pizza to be eaten right now.

Opening the first box, I eagerly grabbed myself a slice of pepperoni. The sight of it—so familiar, so aggressively normal, so impossibly out of place in our current setting—sparked a hunger I hadn't fully acknowledged until this moment. The cheese stretched as I lifted the slice, trailing threads of mozzarella that seemed to connect me to every pizza I'd ever eaten, every normal evening I'd ever taken for granted.

"I didn't realise I was so hungry." I admitted, a bit sheepishly, as a droplet of saliva betrayed my anticipation, falling onto the dust below. The sight of it—my own body's desperate reaction to food—would have embarrassed me once. Now it just seemed honest.

Luke's laughter rang out at my eagerness, a sound that cut through the heaviness that had clung to me since our arrival. It was the laugh of the brother I'd grown up with, the sound of shared jokes and family dinners and all the ordinary moments that now felt impossibly distant.

I mumbled something unintelligible through a mouthful of pizza, the taste exploding across my tongue in a riot of flavour that seemed almost too intense after the blandness of our recent existence. Salt and grease and tomato and that particular alchemy of melted cheese that no one has ever quite managed to explain—it was all there, perfect and beautiful and absurdly wonderful.

A rogue piece of pepperoni, having made a bid for freedom during my enthusiastic consumption, ended up on my singlet. Without hesitation, I picked it off and popped it into my mouth, determined not to waste a single morsel of this unexpected feast. Waste was a luxury we could no longer afford, and besides, the pepperoni didn't care where it had briefly landed.

"You haven't changed." Luke laughed, watching my performance with the amused tolerance of someone who had witnessed my eating habits for decades.

"Nope." I replied, swallowing the last of my mouthful before attacking the next slice with unabated enthusiasm. Some things, apparently, remained constant even when everything else had been stripped away.

The two of us, seated side by side in the Clivilian dust, formed a picture of brotherly connection in the midst of desolation. Conversation grew sparse as we focused on the simple pleasure of eating pizza and sipping the chilled Chardonnay that Luke had somehow managed to procure. The wine was cool against my throat, a small luxury that felt almost decadent under the circumstances.

For a moment, as I closed my eyes and allowed the flavours to envelop my senses, a profound sense of peace settled over me. The bustle of my previous life seemed a universe away. No nagging wife. No bickering children. Just the stillness of an quiet landscape and the comfort of familiar food and drink, shared with my brother in the quiet hours of an afternoon that belonged to no calendar I knew.

But then, as quickly as it had come, the peace was shattered.

My children.

The realisation hit me like a fist to the solar plexus, a wave of guilt and longing that was almost physical in its intensity. For the last few hours, I had been so completely absorbed in the novelty and the struggle of our situation that Mack and Rose had slipped from my immediate consciousness. The thought of their faces, their voices, the warmth of their small bodies pressed against mine—it all surged through me now with an ache that was both sweet and agonising.

I missed them. Terribly. Desperately. With a ferocity that caught me entirely off guard.

How could I have forgotten? How could the father in me have been so thoroughly silenced by the survivor, even for a few hours? Rose with her gap-toothed smile and endless questions. Mack with his serious eyes and the way he tried so hard to be grown up. They were out there somewhere—on Earth, in Broken Hill, probably worried sick about where Daddy had gone. And I was here, eating pizza like I didn't have a care in the world.

In an attempt to quell this sudden onslaught of emotion, I shoved another half-slice of pizza into my mouth. The action was automatic, a physical response to the turmoil that churned within. The food, once a source of solace, now tasted of distraction—a feeble attempt to fill the void that the thought of my children had ripped open.

"Oh my God. Food!" Jamie's exclamation cut through the quiet early evening air, his voice a mixture of surprise and unabashed delight that was almost childlike in its enthusiasm. It was a reaction that, under normal circumstances, might have seemed exaggerated, but here, in the vastness of Clivilius, it felt entirely appropriate.

"And wine." Luke chimed in, his tone carrying a note of pride as he held up the half-drunk bottle of Chardonnay like a trophy.

"Well, you two look like you've given it a fair go already." Jamie joked, his eyes sparkling with a mix of humour and hunger as he settled into the dust beside us. His hair was damp from the lagoon, and I wondered briefly what experience the water had given him. Whether it had whispered to him too.

We? The thought flickered through my mind as I glanced across at Jamie, now an integral part of this impromptu picnic.

"Well, Luke has." I laughed, redirecting the jest towards my brother, who seemed to have taken the lead in our consumption of the wine. My laughter was genuine, but it masked an underlying discomfort that had nothing to do with the company. As I took another sip of the Chardonnay, my face involuntarily scrunched with distaste. Truth be told, I wasn't much of a wine drinker. The sharp tang clashed with my palate, a reminder of my usual preference for sweeter, less sophisticated beverages.

I'll make sure I ask Luke to bring something a little more sugary, next time. The thought was both whimsical and serious, a small assertion of preference in a situation where preferences seemed almost irrelevant. Not that I drink much alcohol anyway, but if I'm going to drink...

The sentiment trailed off in my mind, an unfinished musing that reflected a broader truth about our current existence. We were far from the choices and comforts of home, yet even here, we sought to carve out moments of personal preference, small declarations that we were still the people we had been before.

The wine, the pizza, Jamie's arrival—they all wove together into a tapestry of the familiar within the unfamiliar, a comforting illusion of normality against the backdrop of our impossible circumstances. Yet, as I sat there, sharing laughter and food with my companions, the guilt about my children continued to gnaw at the edges of my contentment. A father shouldn't forget. Not even for a moment.

I looked up at the clear sky, noting how the sun had begun its slow descent behind the distant mountains, painting the horizon in hues of orange and pink that would have been beautiful if they hadn't felt so ominous. It would be dark soon, and the chill of the Clivilian night wasn't far behind.

“Well." Luke announced, pushing himself to his feet with a sense of finality that pierced our moment of peace. He brushed the dust from his clothing in a gesture that seemed as much about preparation to leave as it was a dismissal of the day's accumulated grime.

"Better get back. Don't want Gladys to finish all the wine in the house." He added, the grin on his face failing to mask the reluctance that threaded through his voice. He didn't want to leave us here. But he couldn't stay.

Gladys. The name flickered through my mind as I closed my eyes briefly. Oh yes, Beatrix's sister.

My interactions with her had been limited, yet memorable. She possessed a quirkiness that was both refreshing and endearing—the sort of person who seemed comfortable being exactly who she was, regardless of circumstances.

"So, that's it then?" Jamie's voice was tinged with a mix of resignation and disappointment that echoed my own feelings.

Luke's response was tender—a simple act of affection as he kissed Jamie on the forehead. The gesture spoke volumes about their relationship, about the love that existed between them despite everything that had happened and everything that was still to come.

“Yeah." He affirmed, his voice steady yet soft. "But I promise I'll be back first thing in the morning."

“Fine." Jamie replied, his shrug not quite masking the disappointment that clouded his features. "I wish we could go with you."

The sentiment, simple and raw, echoed my own thoughts with painful accuracy.

My eyes began to burn again, that familiar sting that preceded tears I refused to shed.

I wish I could go with Luke too.

The thought was a pang of longing, a desperate desire for return to a life that now seemed as distant as the setting sun. But the reality of our situation was inescapable. Clivilius had spoken to me—its voice a constant echo in the depths of my mind—and the Portal had rejected us. The finality of that rejection settled coldly in my stomach, heavy as the stones that ringed our campfire.

We would never leave.

The knowledge was still too fresh to fully accept, too enormous to comprehend. But it was there, waiting at the edges of every thought, ready to swallow any hope that dared to surface.

"Good night, Luke." I managed to say, my voice barely above a whisper, heavy with the acknowledgement of our entrapment.

"Night, Paul." Luke replied, his farewell casual on the surface yet loaded with the gravity of our shared predicament. He waved—a solitary figure retreating into the encroaching darkness, heading toward the shimmer of the Portal that would carry him back to Earth while we remained behind.

The silence that followed his departure felt oppressive and profound, a physical weight that settled over the camp like a blanket.

Jamie and I settled into the dust, our makeshift dining room for an evening that had turned from celebration to something more melancholic. We shared the remnants of our pizza and the wine under a sky that transitioned from the warm hues of sunset, and finally to a deep, impenetrable black.

The fire, our beacon and companion, crackled softly beside us, its glow dimming as the night claimed its dominion over everything beyond the reach of our small flames.

"It's so quiet." I remarked, the silence enveloping us so completely it felt like a tangible presence. I stretched my legs out in front of me, muscles aching from the day's exertions and the unfamiliarity of the ground beneath me. On Earth, night came with its own soundtrack—crickets, distant traffic, the rustle of animals in the darkness. Here, there was nothing. Just silence so absolute it seemed to have texture.

"I know." Jamie agreed, his voice a soft echo in the stillness. "And dark."

He gestured upward, toward the night sky—a canvas that should have been scattered with light but instead offered nothing but void.

"Have you noticed that there aren't any stars?"

His words hung in the air, and I felt something cold slither down my spine. I tipped my head back, letting my gaze wander across the expanse above us. He was right. The blackness was absolute—a void where I expected the twinkling of distant suns, the familiar patterns I'd learned as a child, the same stars that had watched over humanity since the first eyes turned skyward.

Nothing.

Not a single point of light.

"And no moon either." I observed, the absence of its familiar glow adding another layer to the eerie atmosphere that pressed in from all sides. The moon had been my companion on countless sleepless nights, a silver witness to late-night feeds with newborn Mack, to quiet moments on the back porch when the house felt too small to contain my thoughts. Its absence felt personal. Deliberate.

"What do you think that means?" Jamie's question hung in the air, weighted with implications I wasn't sure I wanted to explore.

"What do you mean?" I countered, genuinely perplexed. My mind, tired from the day's events and the constant barrage of the unknown, struggled to grasp the implications of his question. To me, the absence of stars and moon meant primarily one thing: an even darker night ahead. A practical concern. A survival consideration.

But Jamie was reaching for something deeper, and part of me didn't want to follow him there.

If courage had not eluded me at that moment, I might have suggested we keep the fire burning throughout the night, a beacon against the darkness that seemed to press in from all sides. Yet I hesitated, uncertain of Jamie's reaction to what might be perceived as an irrational fear. After all, our situation was already fraught with challenges; admitting to a fear of the dark, even in a place as alien as this, felt like a vulnerability I wasn't ready to expose.

“Well." Jamie began, a thoughtful edge to his words. "Doesn't the moon normally affect the oceans and tides?"

I shrugged, a gesture born of confusion and a deep-seated unease that seemed to grow with every passing moment.

"I guess." I replied, the words heavy with my own doubts. "But all we've seen is a river. We don't even know there are any oceans here."

The admission felt like conceding to a broader, more profound disorientation regarding our place in this world—or indeed, if it was a world at all in any sense we understood.

"There has to be!" Jamie declared with a conviction I envied. "We have to still be on Earth, somewhere."

His assertion felt like a desperate grasp at the familiar in a sea of unknowns. But his certainty only served to deepen my own confusion. Earth? With no stars? No moon? A Portal that connected to Tasmania? Rivers that flowed with water that could—

I cut off that thought before it could complete itself.

"I'm so confused." I confessed, my hand instinctively going to my head as if to physically grasp the answers that eluded me.

"None of this makes any sense." I mumbled, my voice trailing off into the darkness. The questions circled in my mind like crows around carrion.

Are we still on Earth? Are we somewhere else? Will I wake up in the morning and find that it's all just a strange, terrifying dream?

The possibilities seemed endless, each more disconcerting than the last. And beneath all of them, the cold certainty that the Portal had rejected us, that Clivilius had claimed us, that whatever this place was, it intended to keep us.

Jamie, perhaps sensing the futility of our speculation, or maybe just weary from the day's emotional toll, rose to his feet. With a decisive movement, he tossed the empty pizza boxes into the fire. The cardboard caught quickly, erupting into a brief but bright display of flames that seemed to fight back the darkness—a small, defiant blaze that illuminated our faces for a precious moment before dying down to mere embers.

"Kick some dust on those embers when you turn in, won't you." He said, his tone casual but carrying an implicit trust that I would see to our safety for the night. It was the kind of request that acknowledged, without stating, that we were in this together now. Whatever "this" was.

"Sure." I replied, the weight of the night suddenly pressing down upon me with renewed force. "I won't be far away."

As Jamie retreated toward the tent, his silhouette swallowed by the darkness after just a few steps, I remained seated. Alone with my thoughts and the dying fire. Alone with the absolute blackness of a sky that offered no comfort, no guidance, no familiar points of light to navigate by.

The night stretched on, a canvas of unending void, as I pondered our situation. The absence of stars. The absence of moon. The unfamiliarity of everything beyond the pathetic reach of our fire's glow. The silence pressed in from all sides, creating a sense of isolation that was both profound and deeply personal.

Somewhere out there, on a planet I could no longer reach, my children were sleeping. Or perhaps they were awake, wondering where their father had gone. Perhaps Claire was pacing the house, calling my phone, leaving messages I would never receive. Perhaps—

I couldn't continue that thought. It was too painful, too present, too real despite the unreality of everything around me.

In this moment, on the edge of an unknown world, the questions of our existence and our place within the cosmos seemed to loom larger than life itself. We were specks of consciousness in an indifferent universe—or perhaps not a universe at all. Perhaps something else entirely. Something that didn't need stars or moons. Something that had its own rules, its own physics, its own hunger.

I kicked dust over the embers as I'd promised, watching the last of the light die beneath the settling particles. Then I made my way to the tent, navigating by memory and the sound of Jamie's breathing within.