The Place Has A Name

“You know you're really stranded when even the stars don’t show up.”

Sitting down in the dust beside Paul, the cool of the evening settled softly around us. I exhaled a breath I hadn’t realised I’d been holding. The fire was burning lower, and the embers glowed in the ash—dull reds and sudden flickers, rising and falling like breath. Tiny sparks spiralled upward, brief and bright against the darkening sky, vanishing before they ever reached the height of our dreams. Remote. Unreachable. Like the life I’d left behind.

His question came quickly, as if he’d been waiting eagerly for my return. "How is he?" The words weren’t casual. They carried weight—genuine concern etched into every syllable.

"Still in a lot of pain," I admitted, my voice low, stripped of any pretence. The truth sat heavy on my tongue, heavier still in my chest. I didn’t dress it up; there was no point. "I've changed the dressing on his wound and given him some more painkillers and a few sedatives. He should be out for the rest of the night." I spoke with the habitual detachment of medical routine, but the undercurrent of hope couldn’t be entirely masked. I wanted—needed—the drugs to work. For Jamie’s sake, and maybe for all of ours.

"Thank you, Glenda," Paul said, his voice laced with sincerity. The words were meant as comfort, as recognition, but they unsettled me. "I'm not sure we would have survived here long without you."

I nodded faintly but didn’t respond right away. The compliment sat uneasily with me, like a coat I hadn’t asked to wear. Gratitude now felt premature. Too fragile. Too easily shattered by the next disaster. It’s a bit too soon to be thanking me, I thought grimly. The truth lingered at the edges of my awareness: From what I’ve witnessed so far, there’s still plenty of time for us to die yet.

The fire crackled between us, sending occasional sparks upward into the deepening twilight. Silence stretched, companionable but laced with unspoken questions. I turned one of mine over and over in my mind, uncertain whether I truly wanted the answer.

Eventually, it pushed its way to the surface.

"Is this all of you?" The question broke free before I could second-guess myself again, my voice quieter than intended but firm enough.

"Yes." Paul’s response was immediate. Uncomplicated. A single syllable that held the weight of finality.

"There's been nobody else?" I pressed, compelled by the gnawing uncertainty that refused to leave me. My fingers fidgeted in the dust beside my thigh, the tension working its way into my shoulders.

"No," he repeated, then glanced sideways at me, frowning slightly. "Were you expecting more?"

The moment hung between us like a breath held too long.

"Oh... um… no," I stammered, the instinct to deflect kicking in faster than I could stop it. The truth—a tangled mix of suspicion, fear, and reluctant hope—wasn’t something I was ready to unpack. Not with Paul. Not yet. If he knew nothing of others, if this truly was all that remained… then sharing the quiet panic that had taken root in me would only deepen the shadows we were all already trying to keep at bay.

Better to hold it close for now. To keep it locked down. Survival first. Answers later.

We lapsed into silence, the crackling of the fire the only sound in the still night. The flames twisted and curled like living things, their rhythmic flicker casting shifting shadows across the dust-strewn ground. My gaze was drawn to them, the way they danced and whispered and breathed. There was something almost hypnotic in their movement—something ancient and steady in a world that felt anything but.

For a while, I let the fire fill my vision, its warmth brushing against my face, the scent of charred wood curling into the cool air. It became a mesmerising distraction from the whirlwind of thoughts and emotions churning just beneath the surface. The fire didn’t ask questions. It didn’t offer answers. It simply was. A beacon in the dark. A small, defiant light surrounded by so much vast, unknowable blackness.

In that silence, the weight of our circumstances pressed in, dense and inescapable. Determination warred with dread in my chest—one fuelling me to keep moving forward, the other quietly reminding me just how far from everything I had ever known we truly were.

"You know you can't go back," Paul said. His voice was quiet, almost apologetic, yet the truth behind the words hit with the bluntness of cold steel.

"I know," I replied, my voice hollow with acceptance. My father had told me that—had laid out the risks, the rules, the irreversibility of the crossing. He'd told me more than I’d wanted to hear at the time, always speaking in that careful, measured tone of his. Half-story, half-warning. At the time, it had felt like a game. A fairy tale dressed in his scientific logic. Now, it was a life sentence.

We fell quiet again, Paul’s gaze fixed on the flames, mine drifting further inward.

Sitting there, knees pulled close to my chest, the memory of my childhood crept in like mist through a half-closed window. I could see myself—small, wide-eyed, curled up beside my father on rainy afternoons as he spun his stories about Clivilius. Tales of otherworldly landscapes, curious creatures, and skies painted in colours the human eye couldn't yet comprehend. He spoke with such conviction that I used to believe he’d really been here—that Clivilius wasn’t just some myth cloaked in metaphors.

As a girl, I’d imagined it all vividly. I'd dreamt of standing where he once stood, of discovering the mysteries he hinted at, of unlocking something extraordinary. In those moments, Clivilius had been more than a story—it had been a promise.

But now that I was here, with the smoke from our fire clinging to my clothes and exhaustion pulling at my limbs, I could feel the fracture between those stories and this reality. The magic was gone. Stripped away by hunger, fear, and the sharp, cold knowledge that we might not survive this.

Clivilius wasn’t the wonder I’d once clung to in my imagination. It was dust and danger and silence. It was beautiful, yes—but the kind of beauty that came with barbed edges and heavy costs.

And suddenly, I ached for home in a way that caught me off guard. For the humming machines of the hospital, the smell of coffee in a sterile breakroom, Pierre’s teasing smirk. For the unremarkable. The safe. The human.

I closed my eyes briefly, letting the fire’s warmth press against the rising chill in my chest. Somewhere in the distance, a wind stirred the dry grasses. And the only thing I was certain of was that Clivilius had claimed me, and there would be no going back.

As I sat beside Paul, the warmth of the fire doing little to chase away the chill of realisation, I couldn't help but wish for an escape from this reality. Not an escape in action—there was nowhere to go—but in thought, in fantasy. The absurd notion that I might still wake up in my bed, back in the gentle hum of Earth’s familiarity, flickered briefly in my mind like a dying ember. The comfort of clean sheets, a quiet room, Pierre’s voice murmuring from beside me—it was a lie I almost let myself believe.

But the scent of smoke, the persistent ache in my muscles, and the weight of dust on my skin reminded me otherwise. This wasn’t a dream. This was real. It was the life I was now bound to, stitched into it by fate and decision alike. A life filled with challenges, questions, and an omnipresent silence that echoed too loudly when the conversation paused.

Seeking to shift the tide of my thoughts from the mire of nostalgia and regret, I forced my gaze from the fire and turned to Paul. “So, what did happen last night?” My tone was casual, but the question was loaded—an attempt to anchor myself to the reality I was now part of by understanding the sequence of events that had shaped it.

Paul exhaled, the firelight catching in his eyes as he turned his face slightly, as though staring back into memory. His recounting came slowly at first, but then it flowed—a harrowing tale of a sudden dust storm, whipped up with such violence it had felt almost alive. An eerie darkness had descended, not just the absence of light but something oppressive, like the sky itself had collapsed inward.

I listened, rapt, each word painting a picture more surreal than the last. The tent thrashing against the wind. Jamie stumbling in the black storm. The burn. The way Paul described it, the storm hadn’t just been weather—it had been something more. Something sentient in its hostility. My stomach clenched.

"And that was how Jamie got burnt," Paul concluded, his voice low, like a lullaby to a nightmare.

I blinked, stunned by the sheer brutality of the account. “Christ,” I breathed, though the word never quite made it past my lips.

The casual finality of Paul’s tone didn’t match the weight of what he’d just shared. It felt surreal, almost dissonant, like ending a tragedy with a shrug. My eyes lifted instinctively to the sky, searching for anything—anything—to hold on to. But there was nothing.

"It's very dark. There is no moon, or stars here?" The question slipped out before I could fully form it, a quiet appeal for something familiar. A night sky should have stars. Shouldn’t it?

My voice sounded small, childlike in its hope.

"I don't think so," Paul replied, glancing upwards as if to check. "Or at least, we didn't see anything last night." The way he said it, flat and honest, left little room for interpretation. No stars. No moon. Just endless black.

"Oh," I murmured, my gaze returning to the flames, now seeming more fragile than ever. My arms wrapped around myself reflexively, chasing warmth, comfort, answers—anything.

"I see." The words were barely audible. But what I saw was this: we were very much alone. No stars to navigate by, no moon to mark the passage of time. Just us, a fire, and the dust of a world that didn’t care whether we survived it or not.

"Glenda," Paul's voice, soft yet filled with a resolve that caught my attention, prompted me to meet his gaze.

"Yes, Paul?" I answered, sensing the gravity of what he was about to say.

"The dark can be a scary place here. I'm going to keep the fire going all night.” His declaration, so simple yet resolute, was more than a practical commitment—it was a quiet pledge of vigilance. It spoke to something deeper: an instinctive understanding of how darkness unsettled us, how it amplified our fears and blurred the boundaries between real threats and imagined ones. In a place like Clivilius, where even the air seemed to whisper of unseen dangers, light was more than comfort—it was armour.

I nodded slowly, then asked, "Do you feel safe here?” The question hung in the air between us, deceptively casual. But beneath the surface, it was an invitation—to honesty, to vulnerability. It wasn't just about our physical safety. It was about trust, about fear, about the mental toll this strange world was exacting from each of us in quiet, persistent ways.

Paul’s hesitation was telling. He didn’t rush to respond, and in that pause, I felt the weight of his own internal reckoning. "Nothing about this place seems particularly safe," he admitted finally, the words blunt and unadorned. "But I think having the light is the best thing for us, to hopefully avoid a repetition of last night's fiasco."

His logic was sound, and I found comfort in it, even as my own sense of unease continued to stir beneath the surface. The dust beneath me shifted slightly as I adjusted my seated position, the gritty sensation grounding me once more in the strangeness of our reality. This was not Earth. This was not home.

The unknowns of Clivilius stretched out in every direction—unseen weather patterns, uncharted terrain, and the lingering terror of a camp consumed by darkness. The fear of what might still be out there, what might be watching from beyond the fire’s glow, if anything at all,  tugged at the corners of my mind.

"I think we should build some security for our small settlement. And soon," I said, the words firming on my tongue. It was a declaration not just of intent but of need—a way to assert some control in a situation that felt increasingly beyond our grasp. I didn’t care what form it took—fencing, barriers, designated watch rotations—just something to protect us, to make this place feel less like a wilderness waiting to swallow us whole.

Paul turned to me, his expression thoughtful, and gave a small nod. "I'll have a chat to Luke about it tomorrow," he promised, his tone carrying a note of resolve that matched my own.

I offered a faint smile in return, the corners of my lips lifting just enough to acknowledge our shared understanding. It was something. A plan, however small, to push back against the darkness. As the fire crackled beside us and the shadows danced just out of reach, I let my thoughts drift to the medical tent I intended to build. It would be my sanctuary of order amidst disorder—a place where, maybe, I could do more than just react.

Maybe, in time, I could begin to heal—not just wounds, but the deeper fractures we were all trying so hard to hide.

"You'll take the first watch then," I stated more than asked, rising slowly to my feet and brushing the fine, powdery dust from my slacks. The movement felt symbolic somehow, like shifting from reflection into action. The idea of a watch system had taken root almost instinctively—an old habit from years of medical night shifts and disaster drills. Some part of me still clung to structure, to the small things that made survival feel manageable.

"First watch?" Paul echoed, his tone laced with mild surprise. The concept clearly hadn’t occurred to him yet, though I couldn’t blame him—our lives had shifted so quickly that even the most obvious precautions were easy to overlook.

"Well, you can't very well sit there awake all night," I said, giving him a faint, tired smile. I paused to stretch the tightness from my back, the ache of exhaustion deep in my muscles. "I'll switch with you when I check on Jamie during the night." There was comfort in making the arrangement sound matter-of-fact, as if this level of organisation was the norm rather than an improvised response to our growing unease.

"Sure," Paul replied simply, returning his gaze to the fire. The flames threw shifting shadows across his face, painting him in hues of gold and coal. He looked older in that light—more weathered, more serious. Or perhaps we all were now.

I began walking towards the supply tent, the fire at my back, but after a few paces, something tugged at my thoughts. I turned, the dry air clinging faintly to my skin as I called out, "Oh, and Paul?"

"Yeah?" he replied, looking up.

"Does our little settlement have a name yet?" I asked. The question was born from a sudden, almost childlike urge for definition—for something familiar, tangible. Naming things had power. It turned nowhere into somewhere. It was the first step in laying claim to a place, in making it our own.

There was a pause, and then his voice came back with a soft smile tucked inside it. "Bixbus."

I blinked. The word settled oddly in my ears, unfamiliar and peculiar. "Hmm. Odd name," I said, my tone half-musing, half-amused. And yet, as I turned and ducked inside the tent, the name lingered with me like an ember catching in the folds of my thoughts.

Bixbus.

It wasn’t elegant. It wasn’t poetic. But it was ours.

In a world as strange and unpredictable as Clivilius, claiming something—anything—felt like a victory. Even if that something was just a name whispered to the stars we couldn't see.