4338.205 · July 24, 2018 AD
Shelter and Its Discontents
Luke returns with garbage bags and a grin, calling this wasteland beautiful. Paul isn't sure whether to laugh or scream. But when Luke steps back through the portal carrying their rubbish, something impossible happens — something that makes Jamie turn to Paul with an expression he's never seen before. Two words that change everything. Two words that might be delusion or might be the first light they've seen since the portal sealed them in.
The tent is an obstacle in more ways than one. Poles slip from sweaty hands. Canvas sags where it should stand firm. Jamie calls Paul "clumsy" with a bluntness that stings precisely because it's true. And yet they're building it together—hostile strangers wrestling shared catastrophe into something that might, if they're lucky, keep them alive through whatever the night brings.
Luke's revelation changes everything without changing anything. Items can leave Clivilius. Paul's phone has already crossed the threshold he never will. The garbage bags disappear through the shimmer, and with them goes something unexpected: Jamie's cynicism, replaced by a grin Paul has never seen and words that land like a benediction. There may be hope for us yet.
But hope is complicated. When they finally finish—when the tent stands proud against the rust-coloured landscape, imperfect but upright—Paul steps inside and cannot breathe. The canvas walls press inward. The air grows stale. Even shelter can become a cage when you're sharing it with a man you barely tolerate.
He escapes back into the vastness, where at least the sky is high enough to let him think.
