(no subject)

Over the hills.

We packed up our things and went back to Grant's car that afternoon. Samantha was sitting writing something and Percy was doing something to the car, almost as though we'd all just arrived in the dimension. I couldn't see any signs of their camp, but there were caves a short distance away.

I hadn't given them much thought while we'd been upstream, but for some reason their preoccupation annoyed me and and I called,

"Are you ready to go?" while we were still some distance away. They both started calling our names and waving. Then they were explaining what had been happening to them and I was avoiding questions - they were too involved in their own story to be very curious, anyway. They were telling Erynne a lot that I couldn't quite hear while I checked out the player and portal opening discs.

and far away............

and far away........

When I'd moved up river with Erynne I'd made a disk telling Percy where we'd gone. They'd left it in the player, which made it easy to check whether it was still working.

Percy started packing stuff into the car while I checked the portal-disks. Suddenly, I heard something that sounded almost like chanting and Percy yelled,

"Get in the car, we gotta go now! Hurry up, Sweet! Get the damn thing opened already, they're coming to get us!" and he dived into the drivers seat, knocking a couple of discs out of my hand.

This time I think Erynne was into the back seat a second before Samantha, but they were both firmly seated before I closed the player and the staccato sounds of the portal chant started.

The dark-silver sheet started to spin in front of us, the car lurched forward, through - we hit in a cloud of dust, in bone-dry, oven-hot air. I just had time to think that it was another mis-route when

ZZZZZZZZaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap!

and we were on grass, behind a long sign, looking at a familiar road with traffic busily passing along it.

It looked very much like the road into Sunnydale....