This Small Territory

“We didn’t build walls—we collected them. One kettle, one magazine, one clean shirt at a time.”

The caravan door let out a familiar squeak as Chris pushed it open, a sound that had quickly become a part of our new routine. “I think that’s everything,” he announced, stepping into the cramped but welcoming space that was now our caravan home. His voice carried a note of finality, not loud or dramatic, but steady—quiet punctuation at the end of a long and taxing sentence. It marked a threshold, not just physical, but emotional too. One chapter closed. Another hesitantly opened.

I followed him inside, a sigh of relief escaping my lips without permission. It was the kind of release that came not from comfort exactly, but from the letting go of tension I hadn’t even realised I’d been carrying. My body ached in places I hadn’t thought still capable of aching, my muscles sore from the labour of dismantling, packing, lifting, and rearranging. The emotional weight of the move, however modest in distance, had pressed just as heavily upon me.

The caravan, though small, felt impossibly solid compared to the ever-shifting, fabric walls of our tent. There were no fluttering seams here, no creaking ropes snapping in the wind. I wasn’t ungrateful—far from it. The caravan was a gift, a haven from the unpredictable elements and dust and heat. But the transition hadn’t been easy. Every step of the move had demanded more of us than it had promised. It was easy to forget, in the anticipation of change, just how much it costs to remake a life, even in small increments.

My eyes wandered over the narrow interior—compact but sufficient. A bench here, a bunk there, storage tucked into every available crevice. It didn’t take long for my attention to settle on the scattered objects now peppering the space. I hadn’t realised until this moment how many belongings we had accumulated in such a short time.

There was a strange intimacy in seeing our lives gathered like this, compressed into a few square metres. It was as though our existence had been boiled down to its most essential ingredients—bare-boned, but honest. Each item had a story, a weight, a reason for being here. The accumulation wasn’t just physical; it was emotional. Tangible proof of survival.

My thoughts turned briefly to the Drop Zone, that haphazard repository of things sent through the Portal. Until recently, Chris and I hadn’t even known Luke had been storing items there—things from our past, salvaged and delivered without our knowledge. Discovering that had been both surreal and oddly moving. Trinkets, photos, everyday items we thought lost to Earth, all waiting in a silent pile. Like time capsules cracked open in a strange world.

There was a quiet grief in reclaiming those objects. They were familiar, yes, but they didn’t quite fit here—not anymore. They were reminders of another life, one that existed in a different gravity, in streets and cities and predictable clocks. Yet, they were part of us, and now, slowly, they were being reintegrated into this life. Our new life. A patchwork of old and new, stitched together by necessity and stubborn hope.

Chris was already moving through the caravan, finding places for things, adjusting, shifting, settling in the way he always did—practical and unflinching. I watched him a moment longer before turning back to the last box by the door, its cardboard edges softened by the heat. I carried it in and set it down gently.

There. Everything in one place.

The simple act of collecting our belongings—gathering them into this modest space—felt like a triumph. Not just a physical task completed, but a psychological corner turned. It was more than just stuff. It was continuity. It was proof that we could adapt, make a home.

Among the myriad of items that had made their way to us through the Drop Zone, I stumbled upon a stack of my nature and science magazines and journals. Their glossy covers, some creased and slightly warped from their brief time abandoned at the Drop Zone, peeked out from beneath a bundle of clothes and a cracked solar charger. I crouched down, brushing the dust off the top one with the back of my hand, and felt something stir in my chest. A tangle of emotions. Relief, confusion, gratitude. The sight of them, nestled amidst the essentials and the unexpected, struck me as profoundly curious. Of all the items Luke could have selected from the remnants of our previous life, he chose these.

I paused, fingers resting lightly on the pages, still cool despite the heat that soaked the air around us. Had Luke thought of me—me specifically—when he plucked them from our Collinsvale home? Or had he been guessing, salvaging anything he thought might have value in this place of dust and necessity? Perhaps it wasn’t about logic at all. Perhaps it was instinct. Or nostalgia. Or a quiet, unconscious desire to preserve something civilised, something comforting, from the ruins of our Earthbound lives. Or perhaps it was just Luke being chaotic and random.

Chris, meanwhile, had taken to the task of organising the magazines with a focus that bordered on meditative. He sat at the cramped table, elbows tucked in, eyes flicking back and forth as he sifted through them. I watched the way his fingers lingered on certain pages, as if trying to recall why the images felt familiar. Charts, wildlife photography, diagrams of tectonic movement or biodiversity collapse—remnants of a world that felt, at times, both impossibly distant and stubbornly near.

He began stacking them, cross-referencing some kind of internal logic I didn’t dare interrupt. His concentration formed a quiet bubble around him, the sort that would have once been reserved for fixing a mechanical fault or lining up a garden fence with millimetre precision. There was something comforting in that. Chris, creating order. Chris, making a system out of fragments. Though, deep down, I knew the reality: no matter how diligently he arranged them now, they’d likely end up in a single pile again. Tucked away. Flattened under a kettle or a lantern. Maybe doubling as a table leg or propping up a tilted storage bin. We simply didn’t have the luxury of space here.

Turning away from the sight of Chris and his curated chaos, I redirected my focus to a task equally necessary but far less nostalgic—dealing with our laundry. The clothes, which Chris and Nial had so thoughtfully (or thoughtlessly) dumped in the tent, had been bundled up and relocated without ceremony. Now they sprawled before me in a crumpled heap, each piece demanding attention.

I exhaled wearily and began the familiar work of sorting.

In the end, I decided not to hand the task off. It would’ve been easy enough to leave a pile outside each tent, unceremoniously returned. But something in me resisted that. Taking responsibility for it all—sorting, folding, eventually returning them by hand—felt like a quiet offering, a gesture of continuity. Of presence. Of shared labour in a place where no-one had the luxury of being a stranger.

These small acts, I realised, were our scaffolding. The bones of our community were built not on grand achievements but on gestures like this—folding someone else’s clothes with care, preserving old magazines, accepting the slow and awkward blend of old world and new.

The sharp, insistent knocking on the caravan door jolted me from my thoughts, the sound ricocheting off the thin walls with a suddenness that set my nerves alight. In such a compact space, even the smallest interruption felt magnified, as though the whole world had momentarily paused to listen. The knock was quickly followed by a familiar voice, deep and slightly anxious, “Hey, Karen, Chris, it’s Paul. Can I come in?”

A breath caught halfway in my chest as I glanced towards Chris, who looked up from his magazine arrangement with a flicker of curiosity. I moved towards the door, my steps instinctive, steady, though a flutter of irritation stirred within me. Not anger, exactly—just the slight ache of being pulled from the soft rhythm of the moment. Still, I’d long since mastered the art of setting such feelings aside.

I opened the door with a welcoming smile that didn’t quite reach my eyes but would suffice for courtesy. “Hi Paul, come on in," I said, my voice composed and friendly.

I stepped aside, allowing him to enter our modest living space, and as Paul ducked beneath the low frame of the doorway, I was momentarily struck by how much he seemed to fill the room. His broad shoulders brushed the edge of the frame, and as he stood upright, the caravan seemed to contract around him, making his presence feel all the more pressing. He offered a nod in greeting, though his usual air of confidence was tempered by something more subdued.

It was the lines on his forehead that gave him away. Faint, but unmistakable—creases etched deep with the kind of tension that only prolonged responsibility could carve. His eyes, too, darted quickly around the space before settling briefly on Chris, then on me, as though calculating whether he had interrupted something of consequence.

I returned to the task I’d left, folding the next t-shirt in the pile with deliberate calm. My hands moved almost automatically, smoothing the fabric, creasing the sleeves just so—an old habit from a former life where drawers and wardrobes mattered. It was a small act of control, a way to anchor myself as the air shifted with Paul’s arrival.

Whatever he had come to say, it wasn’t idle. I could feel it, prickling just beneath the surface like the stillness before a storm.

“Just got the third caravan from Beatrix,” Paul announced as he stepped further into the space, his voice straining slightly with the effort of masking his uncertainty behind a thin veneer of confidence. There was a tightness to his movements, a subtle tension in his shoulders that hadn't eased even once inside. “She also brought some power generators. I’m planning to allocate one to each caravan, but, honestly, I have no clue about setting these things up.” His gaze drifted, never quite settling on either of us, like he feared that admitting his lack of knowledge might somehow diminish him.

Chris looked up sharply at the mention of generators. That familiar flicker of technical curiosity sparked in his eyes, and his whole posture changed, straightening as though someone had flipped a switch. “I can help with that,” he offered, his voice steady and reassuring in a way that caught even me a little off guard. “I’ll make sure that all the caravans get connected.”

The effect on Paul was immediate. The relief that passed across his features was subtle but unmistakable—the way his shoulders lowered slightly, the tight line of his jaw softening. “That'd be great, Chris. Thank you,” he said, the sincerity in his voice cutting through the earlier awkwardness.

I paused mid-fold, my fingers resting lightly against the worn fabric of one of Chris’s shirts. A warmth spread through me, a buoyant feeling I hadn’t expected. “It’s amazing how quickly things are coming together,” I said, the words tumbling out on a current of genuine wonder. It was true—despite the strangeness of this new world, despite the questions that still loomed unanswered, there was momentum. A sense of building. Of becoming.

Paul nodded, a hint of a smile finding its way to his lips for the first time since he’d entered. “I was planning to check in on Kain. I'll take the generator to him myself,” he added, his tone a little firmer now, as if our short exchange had rekindled a spark of clarity in him.

“Sure thing, I'll handle the rest,” Chris responded, casual yet committed, already shifting into problem-solving mode.

As Paul turned and made his way out, he grunted softly, adjusting his grip on the heavy generator. The sunlight caught his silhouette as he passed through the doorway, outlining him in gold for just a moment—a fleeting vision of strength pressed onward by necessity. I watched him go, the door hanging open behind him, allowing a rush of warm air to seep in and mingle with the quieter energy within our caravan.

After a few moments, when it was clear Paul wasn’t about to return for something forgotten or to ask another question, I stepped to the door and gently pushed it closed. The latch clicked into place with a soft finality, and just like that, we were sealed back in. Our tiny domain, cluttered and imperfect, settled into a moment of stillness once more—an oasis of calm amid the rising tide of responsibility.