4338.208 · July 27, 2018 AD
The Hands That Knew Soil
They'd spent the morning repairing a retaining wall. By afternoon, they were stranded in another dimension. Karen and Chris Owen didn't choose Clivilius—the Portal took Karen before she understood what it was, and Chris followed because leaving her wasn't something he knew how to do. The settlement gained two people who understood patience, cultivation, and working with land rather than against it. It also gained questions nobody could answer.
Luke came to Collinsvale planning to recruit them properly—explanation, discussion, the chance to choose. Instead, he showed Karen the Portal before explaining what it did. Her hand reached for the light. The colours took her before he could stop it.
Chris burst through the door to find his wife vanishing. He didn't hesitate. He didn't understand. He simply followed her into the unknown, because forty years of marriage had taught him that wherever Karen went, he went too.
They landed in dust and silence, pounding on a Portal that wouldn't answer, screaming for a man who stood frozen in their empty cottage half a dimension away.
Bixbus gained conservationists that day—people who knew how to nurture growth from reluctant ground. It also gained Karen's unsettling knowledge: dreams Luke had shared on buses, references to places that didn't exist in the tiny settlement anyone knew.
