4338.205 · July 24, 2018 AD
Warm Pizza, Cold Welcome
Luke runs. Through ochre dust, through shimmering light, through the wreckage of trust on both sides of the Portal. He needs Jamie's help—what he gets is a water bottle and a warning. He needs Gladys to believe—what he gets is silence and a shrug. Pizza boxes stack on alien sand. Wine disappears into the wrong glass. And somewhere between errands and impossibility, Luke realises: he is the only bridge, and bridges get walked on.
The dust of Clivilius coats Luke's lungs as he sprints toward the river camp, desperate for Jamie's help in convincing Gladys. What he finds is not partnership but distance. Jamie's reply comes in the form of an empty water bottle, a scrawled message, and words that cut deeper than dismissal: Stay out of it. You've done enough.
Back in Berriedale, Gladys waits with questions Luke cannot answer and scepticism he cannot break. The water bottle lands in her hands. She reads. She shrugs. And Luke stands at the edge of two worlds, belonging fully to neither.
Then the doorbell rings. Pizza.
The absurdity compounds: balancing cardboard boxes, restraining excited dogs, stepping through a Portal as casually as crossing a garden path. On the Clivilius side, smoke threads the horizon—a campfire, perhaps, or something worse. On the Earth side, Gladys helps herself to wine meant for the stranded.
Luke ferries food, ferries proof, ferries hope between people who are all, in their own ways, furious with him. The only one who can cross. The only one who cannot rest.
