One moment she was standing in the middle of the rotunda looking up into a pinkish indigo sky. The next moment, she had been pushed down into the dew-drenched grass.
"Wife! Are you hurt anywhere?" Zander knelt on the grass, touching her face, her shoulders, her hands.
"I'm OK. Are you alright?" She asked.
"I'm fine." He exhaled, rubbing the hair from his eyes. "Stay here. I have to go back. My parents are still in that horrible mess. I will return for you at dusk. Wait for me."
He grabbed her head with both hands and pressed a quick desperate kiss on her lips.
"I love you."
And with that, he disappeared into the twilight.
For a moment, she sat on the wet pre-dawn grass staring at the empty space where a living, breathing man once stood, and she began to shake and quiver.
She pressed both hands tightly over her mouth to keep from crying out loud but could not stop the shaking that was emanating from deep within her soul. Tears rolled down in fat hot drops from her eyes.
Her man had just disappeared into thin air. He no longer even existed on this side of reality.
Her sudden sense of loss was doubled with the realization that Zander was going back into a dangerous warzone.
She did not want him to return to that chaotic place. The portal would drop him directly into the fire and the attacks that were going on at that very moment. She could not just sit here in a safe spot and do nothing while he ran back into the fire.
But wait...she could still feel the vibration of the portal.
She rose from her awkwardly seated position and stumbled as she tried to quickly rise. Damn this bulky gown!
It was still twilight. If she hurried, maybe she could…
Before the thought had finished forming in her head, the first rays of morning sunlight peaked out over the ridge.
🌺🌺🌺
The morning sun glowed red-orange as it slowly climbed up into the dry California sky. Mid May in the middle of a drought meant that there would not be a wisp of a cloud in the bright blue azure sky.
Two hummingbirds swooped and shrieked, twittering and fighting over water rights above the large fountain in the back garden, while a lone feral calico cat sat among the orange roses watching with sleepy green eyes.
It was just another day in paradise.
Inside the two-story Tudor, the sound of cable news rambled from the large wall-mounted TV in the den to all the embedded speakers throughout the house.
The talking heads were going on and on about the extensive tellurium and platinum mining on various moons and planets in the Solar System. The Red Peace Project was up in arms over the fact that multi-planetary corporations were strip mining Mars and the moons of Jupiter, causing damage to the surfaces of the planet and the satellites.
Mira was barely paying attention. She had discarded the queen gown for ripped jeans and T-shirt, and now she was busy packing.
To Mira, her existence on Earth no longer even seemed that real, at least not as real as her life on Ashrya.
Her husband was on Ashrya. That was real. Why would she give a rat's ass about tellurium mining on Mars? To her, THAT was unreal.
"Nellie, why are we listening to interplanetary news?" Mira sifted through her underwear drawer, pulling out various pieces of lacy lingerie and discarding them for the more durable support bras.
The one thing she missed the most were properly-fitting bras. Ashrya was not a place that had such things mass-produced in basic sizes cut to fit humans.
"What would you like to hear?" The house computer said with the kind of elegance that only disembodied spiritual beings could have.
"I dunno. How about some jazz?"
"There is an extensive selection of jazz in my house collection. Smooth jazz, cool jazz, blues jazz, swing jazz, turn-of-the-century jazz, Dixieland jazz, San Francisco jazz, New Orleans jazz, French jazz--"
"Stop! Just some simple jazz with saxophone is good." She rubbed her eyes. Today was not a good day to choose even the simplest of choices.
"Saxophone jazz, playing from the house collection." Nellie obliged, and strains of peaceful music began streaming all over the house.
The soft music did wonders to ease the strange jangling spikes of headaches that hit her brain at random intermittent times which she had to constantly focus on to ease by applying smoothed neural waves in a type of constructive interference*.
Of course, since she had to add a stronger wave in order to tame the messy jangled waves, the result was a much stronger wave pattern...but who the heck cared. The cost to her was just a tiny bit of concentration. As long as the headaches were able to be controlled, she didn't mind expending a bit of energy.
After a short while, it began to turn into a kind of mind game, where the objective was to smooth out the jangles.
She began to get so good at it that she could do it with one corner of her brain while she washed dishes or vacuumed the floor...or in this case, packing underwear.
Mira sighed and grabbed fistfuls of bras from the drawer. Panties and corsets were plentiful and easily obtainable on Ashrya, but these---these were priceless.
She absently wondered if she handed one of these over to the seamstresses, would they be able to replicate it to some degree for her.
Then she stopped short. She was back in her normal environment, but every thought was Ashrya. It was as if her perception of reality had suddenly been shifted into a different dimension.
Mira felt hot thick tears rising in her throat and choking her again. She cleared her throat and swallowed them down. Of course it would make sense. Over there, she had a real family--people who cared about her. Even her best friend Carol was still on that side of reality.
What did she have over here on Earth? There was nothing here but the wealth and the shell of a house that had been left behind for her by her parents.
She patted both cheeks with the palms of her hands and tried to focus on what she was doing. Zander was coming back by sunset, which meant she had to be ready to leave with him.
Mira had rummaged through the entire house looking for something suitable to pack her things in, but her parents rarely traveled, and when they did, they used huge black suitcases that could hold a kitchen sink.
She would have to move quickly through the portal, and depending on where she popped out at, she needed to be able to move fast. The only thing that was small enough to carry through easily was a carry-on with wheels.
Problem was, the only piece of luggage she owned that was compact and portable enough was a heavy-duty spinner wheel carry-on. It had a gut-wrenching Pepto Bismol pink plastic body that was decorated with large Hello Kitty prints all over its hard clam shell sides.
Eh. It didn't matter. Nobody in Ashrya was going to laugh at it. Nobody knew what Hello Kitty was anyway.
She shoved the bras into the carry-on and then threw in a pair of jeans, a tee shirt, and a several pairs of socks. Then she shoved a bag filled with medical supplies that she knew were in short supply when she and Carol were treating the wounded at Tamein Palace.
That should do it.
Then Mira made a few phone calls; one to the temp company to quit her job, one to the bank to set up auto pay for all her bills, and one to the local Chinese restaurant for some take-out.
Chinese take-out was one of the few things Mira really missed in Ashrya---that and her smartphone.
There had been so many times she wanted to take a selfie just to show the world that---oh hey, she's sitting on a bogbull in the middle of a swamp next to a hot hunk with long blue hair!
That would have been the picture of a lifetime, but Mira knew it was useless to try bringing electronics that required constant network connections to work. Her watch, which she thought had been completely damaged when she splashed into the bog, promptly started back up again as soon as her rump landed on Earth's green grass, and it rejoined Earth's connections once more.
An ancient unconnected Polaroid camera without a silicon brain would have worked….but those things could only be found in museums...
By mid-afternoon, everything that Mira needed to do had already been done. It was barely 1 p.m. and even a few items she had purchased through the net early that morning had been drone-dropped by her house. There was nothing left to do until dusk.
By 7:30 p.m. Mira was already camped out on a beach towel in front of the three willow trees in her back garden with her suitcase in tow. Her wristwatch kept a countdown in large digital numbers till sunset, Pacific time.
As it got closer to dusk, Mira's stomach began to knot. The jangles in her brain were getting worse, but she now knew what to do to calm her nerves. She continued her meditative neural wave interference pattern and feeding into that cacophony, her calm soothing oscillations.
As she continued her meditation, the sun quietly descended behind the western mountains. The air slowly chilled as the last of the golden orb disappeared behind the ridge. The pinkish blue of the sky began to change into a purple color.
All the bright colors of the roses and alstroemeria around her began to become tinged with grey. This was the signature color of twilight.
Mira gripped the handle of her carry-on. She could already feel in between her ears, the now-familiar buzzing of the portal between their worlds opening up.
The choker necklet that Zander had given her began to oscillate. Its soft vibrations were concurrent and synchronous to her inner ears' buzzing, confirming the portal's impending activity.
Mira took a deep breath and stared into the area where the portal was supposed to open up. She could already see the tiny sparkles that lit up the boundaries of the portal itself.
She knew that if she stepped through right now, she would be splashing into Tourmaline Bog. It was the only established portal that connected their worlds, since Daran Duluth had gone back to the original site to establish a permanent connection to pick up Carol.
Her hands began to sweat even though the night air was starting to become chilly. Her black leather jacket was warm, but it wasn't that warm.
She was sweating because she was nervous and excited at the same time.
He said he was coming back for her.
She missed him so much.
Somewhere near the fountain area, the crickets began their nightly ritualistic stridulative chirping.
She could see in the bushes, the reflective eyes of a small animal. It looked shy...most likely a gentle possum waiting for her to disappear so it could start grubbing for insects.
The grey became greyer. The sparkles around the portal became more visible, now that the light was dimming.
She waited with bated breath. The portal sparkles began glowing in golds and pinks and blues.
And now Mira knew the difference between a random one-time disposable portal, as opposed to an established permanent portal.
The sparkly lights around the edges were the main visible difference. The buzzing was also more consistent, without fading in and out due to the unbalanced oscillations of the waves.
Still, she waited.
As the night deepened, the dove grey darkened to a gunmetal shade, and then to charcoal. She was starting to lose the colors of twilight.
Aside from the faintly glowing border of the portal, along with the insistent buzzing in her ears and at the base of her throat, there were no other movements.
And then the buzzing stopped.
Mira felt her chest tighten and her stomach grow cold. There was a sickness in the pit of her stomach.
Zander had never gone back on his word before. Something was badly wrong.
Her eyes steeled.
She exhaled sharply, whipping her body in a tight turn and left the grassy area, dragging her carry-on behind her.
______
*Constructive interference is when two waves superimpose and the resulting wave has a higher amplitude than the previous waves.