Tents on the Horizon

The settlement that Glenda De Bruyn led Karen and Chris into bore no resemblance to anything Luke Smith had described on the morning bus from Berriedale. Where his stories had conjured a world of bridges and azure skies, of capitals and breeding facilities and stone sentinels standing guard at gates, the reality of Bixbus consisted of several large military-style tents arranged around a smouldering campfire on a plain of featureless ochre dust. There were no buildings, no roads, no trees, no evidence of the thriving civilisation that Karen had spent months absorbing from Luke's earnest narrations. The wind carried nothing but grit and the faint mineral tang of heated earth.

The walk from the Portal had taken long enough for the silence between the three of them to acquire its own weight. Karen and Chris had followed Glenda across terrain that rose and fell in low, tired ridges, their boots sinking into dust that coated everything it touched with the persistence of a claim being staked. By the time the tents appeared on the horizon, whatever remained of expectation had already begun its quiet collapse. Chris remarked on the modesty of the settlement with the dry understatement of a man who had been bracing for disappointment since the moment he threw himself through a Portal after his wife. Karen's response was rawer. She had believed in Luke's world. She had carried his descriptions like currency, and the exchange rate had just plummeted.

Glenda welcomed them to Bixbus with a warmth that contained no apology. The name drew confusion from Chris, who had understood they were in Clivilius. Glenda explained that the settlement had christened itself, a small act of ownership in a place that offered little else to possess. For Karen, the name carried a different resonance. It settled the question she had been circling since the Portal deposited her in the dust. There was no capital waiting beyond the next ridge. No facility. No grander settlement. Bixbus was everything, and everything was a handful of tents and a fire that was barely holding.

Jamie Greyson's morning had already been shaped by its own small catastrophes before the newcomers arrived. A clumsy attempt at cooking breakfast had ended when his foot caught the frying pan handle and launched the scrambled eggs into a brief, doomed flight across the campsite. Henri, the smaller and more devious of the two Shih Tzus he shared with Luke, had exploited the chaos with predatory efficiency, claiming the last rasher of bacon before Jamie could recover his footing. The evidence of this defeat still decorated the ground near the fire: an overturned pan, scattered remnants of egg, and the general forensic residue of a morning that had gone precisely as badly as the one before it. Jamie had retreated to the tent to check on his son Joel, only to discover that Joel and Duke had consumed what remained of the meal in his absence. The morning's only consolation was a single rasher of bacon salvaged from beside Joel's plate, eaten standing up with the grim satisfaction of a man who had learned to measure victory in very small portions.

He emerged from the tent as Glenda's party approached, squinting against the light, Duke padding at his heel with the solemn loyalty of a creature who had chosen his human and intended to see the assignment through. Henri lingered near the tent flap at maximum visibility, his expression calibrated to extract sympathy from anyone willing to offer it, the performance of a dog who believed his banishment had been a grave injustice.

Karen recognised Duke before she recognised Jamie. She crouched in the dust and greeted the dog by name, a detail that registered with both Glenda and Jamie as significant in ways neither immediately addressed. She had seen photographs, she explained, and asked after Henri as though enquiring about an old acquaintance. The familiarity unsettled Jamie. This woman knew things about his household that he had never offered to strangers, details assembled from Luke's years of casual narration on public transport and distributed without Jamie's knowledge or permission.

The introductions that followed were coloured by the particular friction of people meeting under circumstances none of them had chosen. Jamie offered his name without embellishment. Karen identified him instantly as Luke's partner, confirming what Jamie had already suspected: that his private life had been converted into anecdote and shared with an audience he had never consented to address. His response was flat, his hospitality nonexistent. He observed that the newcomers were not guests, because guests implied the possibility of departure, and departure was not something Clivilius had thus far permitted anyone.

The question of Luke's whereabouts surfaced and was answered with the brevity it deserved. He was not here. He had not come through with them. Glenda offered the assessment that it appeared to have been another accident, the word carrying the accumulated fatigue of a woman for whom accidents had become the settlement's primary mode of growth.

The conversation had reached the limit of what Jamie was prepared to give. His son lay in the tent behind him, unwell and requiring attention that outweighed whatever social obligations these new arrivals imposed. Karen's knowledge of his dogs, her recognition of his name, her strange certainty about a world she had inhabited for less than an hour, all of it scratched at a discomfort he had no interest in examining in public. Karen, for her part, read the room with the precision of a woman who had spent decades navigating institutional resistance. She asked whether she and Chris might step away for a private conversation. Glenda suggested the river behind the tents.

Karen took Chris by the arm and led him away from the camp with the quiet determination of someone who had already decided what the next step required. Jamie watched them go, exchanged a glance with Glenda that held the shared exhaustion of two people who had been holding things together long before reinforcements arrived, and turned back toward his tent. Whatever those two needed to discuss by the river, it was not his concern. Joel was.