Last-Minute Layover

“Hey, guys, what am I supposed to do? Should I step back through?”

The comparatively crisp night air of Omaha, Nebraska, dried Skott’s eyes out. A warm breeze from beyond the miniature portal meant a faint trickle of humidity was wafting over Earthside.

“You can come back if you wish.” The portal gave Grognar’s scholarly cadence a deep echo. “Probably don’t want to risk using the ring a second time, though. Best to stay on this side if you retreat. We’ll have to use the bulk of the blood-obsidian back at the college labs to make a more permanent, more accurate solution.”

If he went back to Aeirun this early, he’d be committed for at least another three days. And there was no guarantee he’d be able to aim the portal at Boston from the mage’s college anyway.

“I’ll stay over here, open the portal again once I get to Boston,” Skott said.

“Roger,” said Grog.

“How many days' ride will it take for you to reach the land of Boston?” Lamora asked, her face not visible through the narrow portal porthole.

Skott did some mental math. “Maybe… five hours? Depends on the layover. Need to get a flight, though. Realistically, it’ll take the greater part of a day.”

“Ah, that’s just next door,” Lamora said.

“It’s on the other side of the continent. We just have really fast planes.”

Grog then wanted to ask more questions about this mysterious new transportation medium.

From an outsider’s perspective, Skott was talking to a barely-visible portal in the middle of a Nebraska hospital parking lot.

This is… Skott checked the hospital name. This is the hospital I was born at! Whatever strange blood magic governed portalmancy must have homed in on the place of Skot’s birth.

“We need to go,” Sethset said from the background. “Have to get back to the college before this storm rolls in.”

A gust of wind escaped from the portal and out into the cooler Earth air.

“See in a day or two,” Skott said.

With another swish of his wrist, the portal closed. Skott was back on Earth, for now. The blood-red ring remained on his finger. It was good for one more charge, apparently. He’d have to use it sparingly.

Greater Omaha beckoned. Old Omaha, the Earth one. Skott’s own stomping grounds. He’d have to get to the airport. He had business back in Boston, awkward conversations to have, and a job to hopefully resign from. But while he was here, Skott would be remiss if he didn’t make a quick detour…

+++

Skott knocked on an oak door far out in the Omaha suburbs. He’d Uber’d out here, as he was reasonably certain he could get a free ride to the airport once eh was done…

The door swung open.

“Hi, Dad. I was in the neighborhood for work.” Skott wasn’t technically lying.

“Skott?!” An elderly bald fellow who looked a great deal like Skott thirty years on looked like he’d seen a ghost. “Hey, Martha! Did you know about this?”

“Know about what?”

“It’s Skott. He’s here!”

Skott stood at the door awkwardly as footsteps hobbled rather slowly down some stairs.

“Why, Skott!” cried his mother. “If you’d told us you’d be around we’d have cleaned up!”

Skott’s parents were older, well into retirement. They hadn’t seemed that old when Skott left for Aeirun the first time, but the time he’d returned after a year was the first time he noticed a bit of grey hair on the pair. It was only far later that Skott realized they may’ve earned those hairs while fretting about where Skott had been the whole time.

Their current aged appearance, at least, was not a result of Skott’s weeklong second sojourn to the land of his children. Just the standard consequences of time and age.

“Ay, well, going to give me a heart attack, showing up unannounced!” Skott’s father said with a nervous chuckle. “C’mere!”

Skott’s father pulled the secret portal fantasy protagonist into his home.

+++

The parents asked a few dozen questions. Skott did his best to bluff about how exactly he wound up back in Omaha at this time of year.

Once more, he was glad Aeirun and Earth were roughly synced in terms of time; a week in one world was roughly a week in the other. Day’s were perhaps slightly longer in Aeirun, but only by an hour. If it worked on ‘fae folk time,’ with a year in one world being a century in the other, he would’ve had a radically different life trajectory.

“So, Skott, have you got a girlfriend?” asked the dad.

Of course, that was one of the first questions to be asked. Same as it usually was since he turned thirty. Skott almost wanted to bust out the bombshell zinger. ‘Surprise, you’ve been grandparents for sixteen years! And it’s an, ah, ‘mixed’ relationship. Might want to look up orc dietary requirements before next Thanksgiving!

Ah, I never told them about Nessa, even. Skott swiftly changed the subject away from his relationship status. He talked about potentially coming home more formally for Christmas, and unsubtly implied he’d need a ride to the airport as soon as possible.

“Heard from George?” asked his father

“Been a while. Got a text two weeks ago I think?” Skott responded. “Should still be doing good down in, where is he now, Florida? Surely you’d have heard from him more than I have.”

“You simply must stay for dinner,” said his mom. “Oh, and stay the night. Your old room is really only being used as a guest suite at the moment anyway.”

“I… do need to get back to Boston as soon as possible,” he said. “But I think I can stay for dinner…”

On short notice, his mother added a serving or two to the meal she was already preparing for the evening, and the family shared a quick dinner. Skott spun his latest aeirun adventure, with massive elaboration, into a European work trip. Traveling the land, treating with a dashing foreign politician… it translated well enough to boring I.T. projects abroad. Rather than running cabling through some Swiss call center, though, he was attending to diplomatic matters with a multi-species coalition of dwarves, orcs, goblins, and the like.

Skott resolved to save any talk of his surprise orc family for the next official family reunion. That would require a great deal of tact… but he did have until Christmas to think of an ice breaker.

+++

A red-eye flight from Omaha to Boston was surprisingly expensive. Skott arranged for it with an emergency expense account that he’d had set up since his first portal fantasy adventure. Returning to Earth that first time and winding up in a rural swamp hundreds of miles away had inspired Skott to always leave some emergency money aside, just in case he needed a rental…

The flight continued through the night. Luckily, Skott had perfectly trained himself to sleep for the duration of any given flight. It was a trick he’d learned during the frequent flights between Omaha and Boston at the end of each college semester. Just closed his eyes as the plane took off, and opened them as it landed.

A dream invaded his thoughts. No, not a dream, a memory:

Lamora, young like when they first met, sat by a fireside. Orcs and humans and the odd goblin milled about on the eve of battle. The next night they’d attacked High King Auron’s last tree manse.

“Assuming we survive,” she’d said. He could practically hear it even today. “What will you do, outlander?”

“I… really do have to get home,” he’d said. “Grandparents aren’t getting any younger. Oh, but I’d very much love to stay…”

“Maybe the mages can find some way to make portals work consistently?” Lamora’s well-defined orcish countenance was aglow courtesy of the fire. “Would you consider coming and going to our world, at the very least?”

Skott had nodded. “Oh, I would if it were at all possible. As a matter of fact, I may be able to look into something on my end when I get home.”

A fang-bearing smile adorned Lamora’s face. “You’re… a very good man, Skott of Omaha. I suspected you were a pampered foreign dignitary when you told me you were a guest at the high king’s tree manse. But the moment you heard of our plight, you dropped everything. You’re among our strongest warriors, certainly the keystone of our party.”

“Heh. Don’t tell the dwarf that.” Skott downed some sweet mead. “Think he’d get jealous. Anyway… thanks. With the ‘goblin hunt’ and all… I just, didn’t want to be a ‘when in Rome’ kind of guy.”

An Aeirunian would have no idea what that expression meant. Still, Lamora appeared to nod understandingly.

“Now, provided we both survive tomorrow night…” Lamora spoke slowly, clearly nervous. “Ah, by the ancestral hearth fire, this is awkward. Orcs, see, they take life-mates. Our—my—twentieth year marks the first mating season, by which I, ah, my kind are expected by the clan to bear an initial litter…”

The sound of wheels landing on a tarmac awoke Skott, just as he’d trained himself to do. Outside the windows, the sun was just beginning to rise over Boston. Someone had failed to fully close the window blind two rows ahead of Skott, meaning the interior was brighter than it ought to have been.

She hadn’t been giving a free Aeirun anthropology lesson, Skott realized with a red face. Lamora had been trying to explain her wishes in a blunt, orcish fashion.

The plane was sparsely populated as most late-night flights were. Skott left the plane with his minimal baggage as soon as possible. None noticed the beat-red flush on his cheeks.

I mean, it had all worked out in the end… he supposed. Still, nineteen-year-old Skott had been so incredibly dense.

Back in Boston, Skott could open a return portal in his backyard just as soon as he settled accounts. These old memories, and the adventures he’d forged with his surprise family, left him clear-eyed on what he wanted to do in the future. He’d put in a formal resignation at work. Then, he’d have one last potentially awkward conversation to settle accounts…