Warmth.
Leonard Gaspin had not been aware of the cold of the churning portal that he’d stepped into, until his body remembered warmth; the heat of the sun, beating down on him from overhead. It was a fond rejoining at first, that kiss of heat – welcome, to chase away the lingering malfeasance that one could always feel distantly in one’s mind while traversing the darker realms of the Fae. But when warmth became light, became heat, it began to feel more than what was welcome.
It began with two thin panels of cardstock, far better crafted than what one could be expect to scavenge from an abeyance of the Fae Wilds; the first, an intricate conglomeration of odd creatures and tumbleweed, the faint scent of cactus blossom impossibly wafting from it’s freshly inked surface, akin to scientific journaling of what was to come- bizarrely logical, for the Fae. The second card was more to what one expected of their oddities; a mischievous-looking top hat emblazoned across glossy stock, sat atop the architecture of a Greenhouse, mingling more floral notes with first cards own aroma, the heat of both enough to the scald the palm.
Mere moments ago, they’d been placed into the tray of a Portal Machine – a brass and wood construct of wire and gears that had no logic in it’s design, no function, no motivator that should propel the stone archway to which it was affixed, and yet had sparked to life the transitory gate all the same. He’d mistook it as a misplaced paper press at first glance. Of course it wasn’t that, but he was no Realmwalker, and it was not until one truly initiated in the craft had chanced upon him in his shelter of sticks and leaves that he’d considered it any more than he had at first glance.
They’d provided the cards that now propelled him across the planar divide, too – but had been remiss not to mention the queer feeling of dread that pools in the pit of one’s stomach when slotting these cards into the portal-press, exacerbated by impossible fog rolling out of the stone archway, and the darker things drawn to it’s waking. It had not been the first time the Lawman Gaspin stood at the edge of a churning conveyance – but the first had been with the Pale at his back, fleeing London. That time survival was all that compelled him.
This time, it was salvation that pushed him through.
Through, though, might well be an misapplication of the word, for traversing a portal is not like passing over any common threshold, as if one were stepping through a door. No, instead, it is as if one has fallen forward – as if gravity has lost it’s sense, and by rite of Fey magic and the contract of the Arcana, one’s being is pulled forward to be hurled through the dark spaces in the chasms betwixt Fey lands, until one’s world is othered, and footing found again.
First comes the sensory deprivation of the grey, of churning, swirling grey – and then comes the first hint of where one wasn’t and now is. And now…
Warmth.
The lawman’s boots came down into something soft beneath his feet. He found purchase atop a perilous hill, the soft swirling grey becoming a blinding sky of white and blue. His eyes could not adjust before where he’d embanked revealed itself not solid enough for his weight. The world tipping, gravity righting, and his back met to ground swiftly.
It was a mercy that it was soft and warm, the lark that it was shifting – the initial crash into the bank too gentle to drive the air from him, preserving his breath only for the shout he yelped as he found himself sliding down a dune, sand working it’s way into his nooks and crannies, flooding his jacket as he went, incredulously barking up at the sky for this joke played by the realms. It was only another moment, though, before he’d come to a stop, not ten feet from the edge of the portal platform where he’d stepped past – the dune far more manageable than he’d first so thoroughly explored.
For just a moment he lay there, staring up at the desert sky, at a cruel sun crowning the still-spinning portal behind him, affixed at it’s peak, like some blazing wreath that surely had some deeper meaning, aware that even in these few precious seconds while this realm still fought to chase away the cool, humid air that had followed him through the portal, he was truly beyond his depths.
And then, as though he’d done it a thousand times, stepped through the Realmwalker, the crown of the Sun around his head instead, not the Portal, quizzical expression on their face, as they looked down at him.
The Realmwalker had the grace not mention Gaspin’s reacquaintance with humility as he joined him at the bottom of the sand dune, his descent far more graceful. He offered a hand, and as the lawman stood, for the first time he took in his surroundings.
As far the eye could see, a vast landscape stretched. They were amongst vistas of burnt umber and beige, only the sparsest hints of green on the horizon, thriving sheltered in the shadows of towering cliffs of sandstone. Already, he was falling captive to the majesty of this new realm, besot by the sheer scale of the dunes and desert cliffs that sprouted up around him, edifices of ancient winged beings set deep into their stone, as old as mankind’s memory, or older still. Only the back of Gaspin’s mind was present enough to notice to the heat sucking the moisture from his lungs with each with each drawn breath.
But his mind preferred the eye, which perceived a broken promise. No matter which way the eye turned, there was no hint of salvation here.
It had not been what the Realmwalker promised.
“You said that we would find civilization here – that Miss Bly had–”
The Realmwalker had already drawn from his coat a spyglass, and offered it forth wordlessly, prepared, gloved hand coming to direct Gaspin’s eye towards the peak of one great pillar of sandstone - a mountain in it’s own right – about a mile off across the dunes.
Hoisting the looking glass to his eye, Gaspin bit back a remark. Had the Realmwalker been less sparing in his words, he might have anticipated, or thought better of this – But the thought is aborted by what he sees.
Atop the cliff were a dozen tents, erected with various colors and types of fabric, traveler’s luggage piled up to shield them from the wind, campfires rising all around. And people. Blessed, merciful, people – working to set up more permanent shelters with lumber and stone. Gaspin will forever be grateful for the Realmwalker’s silence, that he never speak of the choked sob that leaves his lips.
“Wha- Where did they come from? Why here, of all places.” For he could not imagine what would draw so many to a place so unforgiving.
“Simple.” The Realmwalker answers already setting across the dunes, looking back to Gaspin. “They come to the Watch.”
