When, Not If

"I walked back to find Luke and Jamie kissing like the world was ending—which it had—and tried very hard not to notice what Jamie's shorts weren't hiding."

Jamie had done a commendable job repairing the tent, all things considered. The canvas was taut again, the poles straightened, the guy ropes re-secured with knots that spoke of someone who knew their way around camping equipment. Yet the strong winds from last night — that howling assault that had accompanied my descent into madness — had turned the left wing of our shelter into a disaster zone. Sheets of paper lay scattered across the groundsheet like confetti after a parade no one had wanted to attend, each page a casualty of the chaos we had barely survived.

The urgency that had propelled me moments ago — the need to fetch paper for Jamie's bank details, to contribute something, anything, to our collective survival — seemed to dissipate as I surveyed the scene before me. There was a certain solace in the mess, if I was honest with myself. A reprieve from the relentless pace of our new reality, from the weight of decisions and departures and the constant reminder that everything I had known was irretrievably gone.

Thus, with no particular desire to hasten back to the Portal and face whatever emotional wreckage awaited me there, I allowed myself a moment of deliberate slowness. Dropping to my knees — carefully, mindful of the burn that still throbbed its displeasure with every pressure — I began to gather the strewn paper. Each sheet felt like a small act of reclamation, a tangible connection to a world that grew more distant with every passing hour.

The act of collecting was meditative in a way I hadn't expected. My hands moved without conscious direction, reaching and retrieving and stacking, while my mind drifted through territories I had been avoiding.

As I crawled across the groundsheet, retrieving each piece of paper, I found myself grappling with the duality of our situation. Caught between the need to press forward — to build, to organise, to transform this hostile wasteland into something resembling home — and the desire to hold onto the fragments of the life I had known. Claire's face flickered through my mind. Mack's laugh. Rose's small hand in mine as we walked to school.

The memories were painful in their ordinariness. Not grand moments of crisis or celebration, but the everyday texture of a life I had taken for granted. Breakfast conversations that went nowhere. Bedtime stories I had rushed through because I was tired. Arguments about nothing that had somehow become arguments about everything.

I shook my head, forcing myself back to the present. The paper. The task. The small victory of order imposed on chaos.

With a single sheet of paper and a pen finally located in the debris, I emerged from the tent and stepped back into the uncertain daylight of Clivilius. The security of the canvas, transient as it was, had provided a brief respite — a moment to gather my thoughts and brace for what lay ahead. Now the open air greeted me with its palpable sense of expectation, that particular quality of Clivilius light that seemed to demand something from everyone who stood beneath it.

I began the walk back, each step a negotiation with my injured foot.

Shuffling over the final small rise, the sight that greeted me was so unexpected that an involuntary smile spread across my face before I could consider whether it was appropriate.

Luke and Jamie, momentarily lost in a passionate kiss, their bodies pressed together with an intimacy that spoke of reconciliation rather than mere desire. After all the tension, all the bickering, all the accusations and hurt feelings that had crackled between them since my arrival — here was something beautiful. Something that reminded me that love could survive conflict, that relationships could bend without breaking.

"So, you've made up then, I see?" I couldn't resist the urge to tease, even as I intruded upon their private moment. The words came out lighter than I felt, an attempt at the kind of easy humour that brothers were supposed to share.

Startled, they broke apart with the guilty speed of teenagers caught by parents. The space between them widened as Jamie reflexively held Luke's shoulders at arm's length, as if the physical distance could somehow undo what I had witnessed. The moment of surprise gave way to an awkward pause — a silent acknowledgment of my presence that seemed to hang in the air like an uninvited guest.

I tried not to look down. I really did.

But Jamie's arousal was all too obvious through his thin pale beach shorts, the fabric doing nothing to conceal the evidence of their interrupted passion as it stretched its way down his left leg. The sight triggered something in me — not disgust, exactly, but a deep discomfort rooted in years of careful training. The church had taught me that such things were private, sacred, to be confined to marriage between a man and a woman. And while my logical mind had long since begun to question those teachings, my gut reactions remained stubbornly programmed.

I forced myself to look at Jamie's chest instead, studying the pattern of his shirt as if it contained the secrets of the universe. Heat crept up my neck — embarrassment at having intruded, at having noticed, at my own inability to treat this as the non-event it should have been.

The silence stretched, thick with unspoken acknowledgments.

Jamie cleared his throat and reached for the paper in my hand, his movements deliberately casual despite the flush that coloured his cheeks. He scribbled down his bank details with the focused concentration of someone desperate for a task to occupy their hands — sort codes and account numbers and pin codes, each digit a reluctant surrender to our grim circumstances.

Once done, he handed the paper over to Luke with a simple declaration that carried more weight than its brevity suggested.

"That's it."

Two words that meant: This is everything I have. This is the last of my old life. Take it and do what you must.

Luke's response was tender in a way that made me feel even more like an intruder. He gave Jamie's shoulder a firm squeeze — not casual, not dismissive, but loaded with meaning. A touch that seemed to convey a multitude of unspoken promises: I'll come back. I'll take care of this. I'll take care of you.

"I'll spend it carefully," he assured Jamie, and there was something in his voice that I hadn't heard before — a gravity that sat strangely on my usually flippant younger brother. Then, before I could say anything, before I could offer my own farewell or ask when he would return, Luke turned towards the Portal.

He stepped through its swirling, electric colours without looking back.

One moment he was there — solid, present, the linchpin of everything that connected us to Earth. The next, the Portal's colours swallowed him whole and then vanished entirely, leaving behind nothing but empty air and a palpable sense of finality. The shimmer that had marked the boundary between worlds was simply gone, as if it had never existed at all.

I stared at the space where the Portal had been, half-expecting the colours to reappear. They didn't.

My gaze shifted to Jamie, and what I saw there made my chest tighten with an empathy I hadn't expected to feel. His expression had morphed into something raw and unguarded — a grief so profound it seemed to age him years in seconds. The juxtaposition of his forlorn demeanour against the backdrop of their recent embrace was jarring. Moments ago, he had been kissing Luke with the desperation of someone trying to memorise another person's presence. Now he stood alone, his arms hanging empty at his sides, watching the place where his partner had vanished.

I found myself wanting to reach out, to ask what had transpired between them to cast such a shadow over the moment. Was it simply the pain of separation? Or had something been said, some truth exchanged in those final private moments that had wounded rather than healed?

But Jamie preempted any attempt at conversation.

"I want to be alone."

His voice was devoid of its usual fire, stripped of the sarcasm and defensiveness that seemed to be his default modes. His gaze remained fixed firmly away from mine, as if meeting my eyes would shatter whatever fragile composure he was maintaining.

With those words, he turned and walked off, leaving me to contemplate the scene alone.

I watched Jamie's retreating figure, his silhouette growing smaller against the vast, dusty landscape of Clivilius. The distance between us seemed to grow with each step he took — not just physically, but emotionally. A gap widened by unasked questions and unshared pains, by the fundamental truth that I was an outsider to his grief. I couldn't comfort him because I didn't truly understand what he had lost. Luke would return. The Portal would open again. This separation was temporary.

Wasn't it?

The sight of Jamie walking away, so clearly burdened by a weight I could neither lift nor share, filled me with a sense of helplessness that echoed my own situation. We were both trapped here. We were both watching the people we loved disappear through barriers we couldn't cross. The difference was that Jamie's barrier might reopen at any moment, while mine — the barrier between me and Claire, between me and my children — felt permanent in a way that made my throat tight.

"Hmm."

The sound escaped me before I could stop it — more a reflection of my internal state than a response to anything external. A noncommittal noise that filled the silence without meaning anything at all.

With a shrug that was directed at no one, I turned and moved towards the truck. Its presence in the Drop Zone was a reminder of the work that needed doing, the tangible tasks that could fill the hours while larger questions remained unanswerable.

Approaching the vehicle's rear, I discovered something that lifted my spirits unexpectedly. The truck had an automatic tray — a hydraulic system that could lower the back to ground level, eliminating the need to climb and lift and strain my already-protesting body.

"Well, that's a bit handy," I remarked to myself, a small smile breaking through the general grimness as I considered the ease this would lend to my unloading efforts. Small mercies. They were all we had.

Carefully — mindful of the sharp pain that shot through my foot with every step, the burn making its grievance known in ways that were becoming tediously familiar — I began to unload the truck. Each item I pulled from the back was handled with an unusual level of care and attention. Cement bags, heavy and unwieldy, were placed in neat stacks rather than simply dumped. Tools were laid out in rows, organised by type. The cement mixer was wheeled into position with the reverence usually reserved for religious artefacts.

Organisation had never been my forte. Claire would have laughed to see me now — Claire, who had spent years complaining about my inability to keep my desk tidy, my habit of leaving things wherever I had last used them. But in this moment, as I laid out our supplies with deliberate precision, there was a sense of ceremony to my actions that transcended mere tidiness.

It felt... special.

Imbued with a significance that went beyond the mere act of unloading goods from a truck. These weren't just supplies. They were the building blocks of a future. The raw materials of the civilisation I had pitched to Jamie by the river, the settlement that existed so far only in my desperate imagination.

I thought back to that conversation — to the hope and determination that had underpinned my words despite Jamie's scepticism. We really do have a chance to create a new, thriving settlement. The thought rose unbidden, a beacon in the dusty air. We could really do it.

I surveyed the goods spread before me: cement for foundations, tools for building, the mixer that would bind it all together. A sense of conviction settled into my bones, warming me from within despite the uncertainty that surrounded us on all sides. This was real. This was tangible. This was something I could point to and say: Look. We're building. We're not just surviving — we're creating.

Mack would love it here, I thought suddenly. The freedom, the space, the chance to run without fences or roads or the constant supervision of a world that wrapped children in cotton wool. And Rose — Rose would find magic in the river, in the endless sky, in the very strangeness of it all. She had always been drawn to the unusual, the unexplained, the stories that defied easy categorisation.

The thought of bringing them here filled me with a fierce, almost painful hope.

Yet, as I finished the last of the unloading and turned the truck's engine over, a shadow of doubt crept in. The practical businessman in me, the part that had built a successful company through careful planning and realistic assessment, refused to stay silent.

But what happens when the money runs out?

The question loomed large, its weight threatening to undermine the fragile optimism I had been nurturing. Jamie's bank accounts weren't infinite. Neither were Luke and Jamie's combined savings, whatever those amounted to. At some point, the supplies would stop coming. At some point, we would have to be truly self-sufficient — growing our own food, making our own tools, surviving without the lifeline that connected us to Earth's resources.

I pushed the thought aside with a physical shake of my head, unwilling to succumb to the fear of uncertainty. Not today. Today was for building. Today was for believing.

Luke's creative. I reassured myself with a firm nod, as if the gesture could make the words more true. He'll figure it out.

With a sense of resolve that felt more solid than it had any right to, I manoeuvred the truck between the two stacks of entrance rocks, and positioned the vehicle next to where the Portal had been, ready for Luke's collection whenever he returned. If he returned. When he returned.

The correction was automatic, almost aggressive. When.