Chapter 6: Rifts

They last an admirable four minutes.

Vincenzo frowns. "Are you going to tell us where we're going?"

The blonde woman looks tired, dark bags under her eyes and shoulders slumped. "My house. I'll explain things there." She tries for a smile. "My name is Amelia, the…leader? Council chairman?"

"You don't sound very certain," Marcus presses.

"I'm new to the job," Amelia replies. "Takeshi passed last month."

Marcus raises an eyebrow. "So you were elected?"

Amelia shakes her head. "I was the only one who stepped up."

And on that reassuring note, Amelia stops in front of a house with a large 'X' painted over the door in lumpy lilac paste and pushes inside. No keys, because there's no lock.

A small fireplace burns the long lilac grass into hues of green and blue, with little to no smoke but a heavy incense scent.

"Here, stand around it, try to dry off," Amelia says in concern.

They half gather around, more focused on the decorations carved into the walls in what looks to be half-hearted Van Goghs out of sheer boredom.

Marcus clears his throat. "You said there were animals," he points out, talking to Amelia.

"Yes," the woman says slowly. "Ah, this is a junk world. That loud shockwave is a portal opening, ripping open wormholes. There are many rifts throughout this world, they bring things from Earth and other places - the rift doesn't discriminate. There are a few species here as smart as us, most of them stronger. They have fortifications we could only dream of."

Ian frowns. "Is this the part where you say we can never get back?"

The woman smiles tiredly. "You can, I'm sure. With enough luck and strength. Like I said, the rift doesn't discriminate – they pull and they push. If you find the right one then you can get back. In the time I've been here, thirty years, very few have attempted it and even less have lived."

Kisung scoffs. "If they've gone through the rift then how do you know they're alive?"

"Because they never make it that far," the woman explains. "Scouts find their corpses or liaisons from other groups do." She looks at them all very seriously. "There are animals in the forest. It's best not to wander."

"Has anyone found the places where the rifts appear?" Marcus asks.

"Most are randomised." The woman shakes her head. "But there are stationary ones, like the rift closest, but that doesn't mean the rift only pulls from stationary worlds. Humans come through, other beings too. I do know that it's only a pulling Rift so you can't go back through it."

"Where are the rifts located?" Marcus insists. "Do you have maps?"

"None here but you can ask the other villages if they've heard of any more." The woman sighs. "You should give up. For your own sake. It's not good here, I know that, but it's better than death. You're young, you have so much ahead of you."

Marcus definitely looks like he's going to start an argument about it but Ian elbows him.

"Thanks," Ian says with an innocent smile. "We'll keep our options open."

Amelia shrugs and gestures them to stay around the fire. "Dry off, I'll find some food for you."

They end up slowly rotating themselves to roast every side of their wet clothes while nibbling on cookies harder than ANZAC biscuits.

Amelia explains a bit about how people live here, the systems in place, but Marcus keeps cutting in to ask about other towns and the so-called animals.

There is a knock on the door and Amelia turns to it, looking particularly relieved at being able to escape Marcus' interrogation. "Come in."

A man pushes it open, an impressive beard growing for someone so young. "Hey, I just checked and there's a spare house for them."

Marcus looks like he's going to push it for a moment with more questions but smiles instead. "Thank you. We've troubled you." He turns to the other teenagers. "Come on, it's late."

The house is actually three doors down and looks the exact same except a lot less furniture and knick-knacks. The man even takes a moment to show a side closet/room with a hollow wooden bench and a bucket inside - for a toilet.

"I'll show you where to dump it in the morning," the man says.

Ian purses his lips. "The gardens, right? As compost?"

The other teens think about the lingering, muffled smell throughout the entire place and grimace a bit. Hopefully the people sanitise things properly because using human waste just means a faster spread of disease.

The man just shrugs at them. He's gotten used to the thought now. "There aren't enough beds for you all, by the way. We don't often get humans coming through the rift, so no extra houses have been built."

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Kisung looks around at the leaning walls. "What about the person who built this?"

"He's gone now," is all the man says.

As Marcus sees the man off, the rest pile further into the house. It's small and cramped with no windows or closed off rooms. There's a table and three chairs off to one side, plus two more thin tables pressed against the back wall with some of the purple grass weaved together and laid on top like a...mattress?

Ian tentatively tests one bed by sitting on the edge and then lying back. "It's…not bad. I mean, for a moment there I thought we would just sleep in a mushroom tree, so this is a step up. We have a roof and everything."

Vincenzo starts the fire, shoving the pile of grass from inside a lopsided weaved bag into the same small chimney thing seen at the woman's place. Kisung happily uses his lighter and soon enough it's flaring up turquoise.

Nothing really dried at Amelia's house, so they swarm the fire again. It's not too cold out exactly, especially with the faint wind now blocked, but it's still uncomfortable being so wet.

Kisung starts stripping.

"Oof." Ian looks Kisung up and down. "That's unfortunate."

"Motherfucking what?" Kisung complains, his shirt now off and held near the fire.

Vincenzo shrugs. "My dick is pretty hard right now."

And it's at this moment that May fully realises that she's stuck with these people. She lets out a heavy exhale and pats at her damp skirt. This is going to be exhausting.

Vincenzo starts stripping off all his damp clothes to hang up, not that it'll dry on a night like this. He hangs it over a chair, everything but his underwear and socks.

"You'll catch a cold," Kisung warns.

Marcus rolls his eyes. "That's not how a cold works. A cold is a viral infection and he can't get it if no one gives it to him."

Kisung promptly starts to strip off the rest of his wet clothes too, getting straight down to boxers. Ian takes off his wet raincoat and pants but everything else is dry. Marcus' blazer got the worst of it, so he hangs it over a chair as well, but elects to keep the rest on since the house is cold. May does the same with her sweater and rubs at her skirt as if that will dry it faster.

Vincenzo picks up the grass weave. "So is this the mattress or the quilt?"

"Use your imagination," Marcus offers kindly.

Vincenzo rolls onto the bed and pulls the grass over him.

"Hold on," Ian interrupts, grabbing the other end of the grass and dragging it back off. "Who said you get the bed?"

"You can always join me," Vincenzo offers sarcastically, patting the centimetre of space left beside him.

Kisung climbs onto the actual table. "Shotgun."

Marcus sits on the other bed.

"Rude," Ian accuses. "I thought we'd do rock paper scissors or something." He turns to May and opens his arms. "Come on, baby, it's you and me now."

"May," Marcus calls and gestures her over. "We can both fit if we lie on our sides."

Kisung laughs, rolling over on the table to watch. "Don't you have a girlfriend?"

"Yeah, and it's also freezing, so you have fun over there by yourself while I leech off May's body heat."

May is already arranging chairs in a row facing the wall, making a weird sort of trough for her to lie in.

"Oof, that's a definite rejection," Vincenzo tsks.

Marcus considers this. "Ian, get over here."

Eventually they get settled into bed. Marcus and Ian lie back to back with Marcus pressed to the wall. Vincenzo ruffles his weird grass blanket and Kisung tries to find a nice position. May crawls onto her rather narrow make-shift bed and lies down on her side, feet still sticking out over the end.

May is still damp from the rain, the chairs are hard and crooked, it's cold, Kisung moves too much and Ian starts snoring.

May quickly falls asleep.

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