The Song I Almost Knew

"My hand went for my phone before I remembered I didn't have one anymore. Muscle memory's a cruel thing when there's nothing left to hold."

The sun was dying in spectacular fashion.

It sank behind the distant mountains like a coin dropping into a slot, leaving behind streaks of gold and crimson that painted the sky in colours I'd never seen back home. Tasmania had its share of beautiful sunsets, but nothing like this — nothing so vivid, so unapologetic in its display. The light caught the dust particles hanging in the air, turning them into drifting embers, tiny motes of fire suspended in the gathering dusk.

Around me, the chatter had picked up again, the earlier tensions dissolving into the comfortable rhythm of people who'd shared a meal and found their way back to civility. Laughter punctuated the conversations, genuine and warm, the kind of sound that felt almost miraculous after everything we'd been through.

Then I heard it.

A raspy hum, barely audible above the crackle of the fire and the murmur of voices. At first, I thought it was the wind playing tricks, or maybe one of the dogs making some odd noise. But as I listened, the sound resolved into something more deliberate — a melody, rough-edged but recognisable, carried on the evening breeze.

My eyes found Joel.

He sat hunched in his chair, his pale face illuminated by the dancing flames, his lips moving almost imperceptibly. The hum was coming from him, a tune I didn't recognise, haunting and strange and somehow perfect for this moment, this place.

The hum gradually shaped itself into words, syllables emerging from the rasp like figures stepping out of fog.

"Let us celebrate our story,

The words we've yet to write."

The lyrics hit me somewhere in the chest, a resonance I couldn't explain. The song was unfamiliar — nothing I'd heard on the radio or at any of the pubs back home — but it felt like something I should know, like a name on the tip of my tongue that refused to surface.

My hand moved without conscious thought, reaching for my back pocket where my phone should have been. The gesture was pure reflex, the automatic response of someone who'd spent years pulling out his mobile whenever he wanted to identify a song, look something up, capture a moment. Shazam would have sorted this out in seconds.

My fingers found nothing but denim.

The absence hit harder than it should have. No phone. No internet. No way to record Joel's strange melody or send a message to Brianne or check if anyone back home was looking for me. The emptiness in my pocket was a void that extended far beyond the missing device — it was every connection I'd lost, every convenience I'd taken for granted, every link to the life that had been stolen from me.

A lump formed in my throat, thick and bitter.

I glanced at Uncle Jamie, searching for some sign that he shared my discomfort, that he too was chafing against the boundaries of this prison we'd fallen into. But his gaze was fixed on Joel, his expression carrying something I couldn't quite read. Tenderness, maybe. Or pride. The look of a father watching his son do something unexpected and wonderful.

Had he forgotten? The thought twisted in my gut like a bad prawn. Had Uncle Jamie forgotten that we were supposed to be finding a way back? That there were people waiting for us — Brianne with her swelling belly, Mum probably frantic with worry, my sisters no doubt driving everyone mental with their theories about where I'd disappeared to?

Joel seemed content to stay here, to build this strange new life in a world that made no sense. And Uncle Jamie... Uncle Jamie seemed content to stay with Joel.

Which left me where, exactly?

Glenda rose from her seat, her movement fluid and graceful despite the roughness of our surroundings. The gesture drew everyone's attention, conversations faltering as heads turned toward her. Joel's singing cut off abruptly, a flush of embarrassment spreading across his pale cheeks as he realised he'd become the centre of attention.

"Please, don't stop. You have a beautiful voice," Glenda said, her words carrying a warmth that seemed to wrap around Joel like a blanket.

I frowned, confused by the praise. Beautiful? What I'd heard was rough, scratchy, the sound of vocal cords that had been through trauma and were still finding their way back to function. It wasn't unpleasant, exactly, but beautiful seemed like a stretch.

Maybe Glenda heard something different. Maybe she could perceive qualities in Joel's voice that escaped my untrained ears. Or maybe she was just being kind, offering encouragement to a young man who desperately needed it.

Joel ducked his head for a moment, then started again, the raspy hum building back toward melody. This time he began from the beginning, his confidence growing with each note, as if Glenda's words had given him permission to be heard.

Glenda disappeared into her tent, leaving the rest of us to wonder what she was doing. When she emerged moments later, I understood.

A violin rested in her hands, its polished wood catching the firelight like honey. The instrument looked old, well-used, the kind of thing that had been played thousands of times and carried the memory of every song in its grain. Glenda's fingers found their positions with the ease of long practice, the bow settling against the strings as naturally as breathing.

She began to play.

The notes that emerged were tentative at first, searching, as if she was feeling her way through unfamiliar territory. But within bars, she'd found the thread of Joel's melody and was weaving her own voice around it, the violin's clear tone harmonising with his ragged singing in a way that shouldn't have worked but somehow did.

Karen leaned forward, her earlier sharpness forgotten in the face of this unexpected performance. "You know this song?"

"Not until now," Glenda replied, her focus never wavering from the strings beneath her fingers.

The answer made no sense and perfect sense simultaneously. That was Clivilius in a nutshell — a place where dead men sang unknown songs and strangers accompanied them on instruments that had never played the tune, where the impossible became routine and you just learned to roll with it or go mad.

Luke circled the gathering, bottle in hand, topping up glasses with the attentiveness of a host who understood that some moments required lubrication. I accepted the refill gratefully, the vodka and coke sloshing gently as he poured. Maybe alcohol would help me sleep tonight, would quiet the thoughts that circled like vultures whenever I let my guard down.

Joel's voice grew stronger with each repetition, the lyrics becoming clearer as he found his rhythm.

"Let us celebrate our story,

The words we've yet to write.

How we all wound up with glory,

In the worlds we fought to right."

A shiver ran down my spine, raising goosebumps on my arms despite the warmth of the fire. The words felt loaded with meaning I couldn't quite grasp, like a message in a language I almost understood. Worlds. Plural. As if whoever had written this song knew about places like Clivilius, knew about portals and dimensional rifts and people torn from their lives without warning.

The melody seemed to echo in my memory, a whisper from somewhere I couldn't identify. Had I heard this before? In a dream, maybe, or some half-remembered moment from childhood? The familiarity was there, tantalising and frustrating, just out of reach.

My body trembled involuntarily, responding to something my conscious mind couldn't process. The lyrics spoke of stories yet to be written, of glory waiting to be claimed. They spoke of fighting, of multiple worlds, of celebration in the face of uncertainty.

They spoke of hope.

"To Joel!" Luke's voice rang out, his glass raised high, his face illuminated by firelight and something that might have been genuine affection.

The toast rallied the group, pulling us together in a moment of shared purpose. Glasses rose around the circle, voices joining in a ragged chorus of acknowledgment.

"To Joel," I said, lifting my vodka and coke.

The words felt heavy on my tongue, weighted with implications I couldn't fully articulate. This wasn't just a toast to a young man who'd survived something terrible. It was an acknowledgment of everything we didn't understand, everything we couldn't control, everything that lay ahead of us in this strange new existence.

The alcohol burned a path down my throat, harsh and clarifying.

Around me, the others drank and laughed and returned to their conversations, the moment passing as moments do. But something had shifted in the air, a subtle change in pressure that I felt more than understood. We were different now than we'd been this morning — more unified, perhaps, or at least more aware of our shared predicament.

The fire crackled and sparked, sending its offerings up toward a sky that held no stars. Joel's song had faded into the general noise of the evening, but its echo remained, lodged somewhere in my chest like a splinter I couldn't remove.

Let us celebrate our story. The words we've yet to write.

I didn't know what story we were writing, or how it would end, or whether any of us would find our way back to the lives we'd lost. But sitting there in the firelight, surrounded by people I barely knew but was learning to depend on, I couldn't shake the feeling that we were standing at the edge of something vast.

A beginning, maybe.

Or the end of everything we'd known.

Either way, there was no going back. Only forward, into whatever waited for us in the dust and the darkness and the impossible light of a world that had claimed us for its own.

I drained my glass and held it out for another refill.