The portal appeared in the middle of an empty beach.
Through the glowing blue upright rectangle a mixed group of half-a-dozen men and women stepped out. The dry white sand crunched slightly beneath their feet. The portal shimmered for a few moments more behind them then vanished.
“Welcome to Mauritius, people,” said one of the women, with a slight smile. “Population: unknown, but most of it is just a bunch of dodoes.”
There were appreciative chuckles from her companions as the woman took a small metal cube out of a pocket of her camouflage coveralls. She tapped one side of the cube before dropping it onto the sand. “Right then, beacon’s set. We have three hours max to do our jobs before the door reopens.”
She turned towards a powerfully-muscled Sikh and a tall amazon whose pale-blonde hair hung down her back in a long, thick, white braid. Both wore bandoliers, crisscrossed over their chests “Ranjit, Marta, at least half a dozen live dodos, if possible, for the breeding program. Young ones are fine. You don’t need to lug back any big heavy adults.”
The two nodded. They took a moment to check the settings on their tranq pistols then, without a single word, trotted off, footsteps crunching, up the beach and vanished among the small leafy trees of the neighbouring woods.
The woman turned to the youngest members of the group, a stocky Haida woman in her early 20s, and a youth who still looked young enough to get ejected automatically, without request for I.D., from any bar that he tried entering. Both also wore bandoliers and had holstered tranquilizer pistols on their hips. “Telford and Vic, you’re on live-capture too. Since this is your first time for that,” she said, looking at Vic, “take your lead from Telford. She’s done live-catch before. Shouldn’t be any real problem. Dodoes have no natural predators and they’ve not encountered humans yet at this point in time. You could walk right up and jab the tranq in by hand if you had to.” She gestured towards their bandoliers of spare darts.
“Just be careful, all the same,” the woman said.
“Ma’am?” Vic gave her a puzzled look. “What’s the worry? If dodoes don’t attack humans…”
“They haven’t seen humans,” corrected Telford, a warm smile taking the sting away from her correction for her partner. “Doesn’t mean they’re not aggressive. Right, Della?”
Their leader nodded. “Correct.” Della held up an arm, pushed down one sleeve of her coveralls to expose the white outlines of triangular scars on both sides of a forearm. “Like a parrot, they can nip pretty good if they want to with those big beaks. Just remember the first rule. Confirm your target. Got it?”
The younger team members nodded. Della turned to her partner. “If you’re ready, Djan?”
Her partner, an older, white-haired man, nodded and lifted up a large picnic cooler. “A tisket a tasket,” he said, “let’s go and fill our basket.” A broad grin spread across his seamed face. “Maybe we can beat Simeon’s and Riva’s record of a dozen eggs.”
Della smiled back. “Maybe.”
The two pairs split away and headed off the beach at different angles, disappearing into the forest.
Half an hour later, a frustrated Vic and Telford were still looking to bag their first dodo.
“For something with ‘no natural predators’, dodoes seem pretty blessed good at hiding themselves,” grumbled Vic, as he squatted down onto a half-sunk fallen tree trunk. He paused a moment as a small lizard scuttled away off the rotting log and into the surrounding brush.
Telford grinned in response, while looking around the little clearing. Soft hoots sounded from the brush surrounding them. She slipped her tranq pistol from its holster. “Yeah, I guess even a dodo can be cautious.” She regarded her partner. “Not like the last time I was here.”
Vic eyed his partner, eyebrow raised. “Last time?”
Telford nodded, still turning around. “Mmhmm, third trip for me, this one. The other two times we were at least a few years off, maybe even a decade, from when Mauritius was ‘discovered’.” Head cocked, listening, she lifted an arm to point. “Sounds like maybe something over that―”
A big ball of feathered fury exploded out of the bushes behind Vic. As he tried to turn and stand at the same time, the charging dodo slammed into him. Caught off-balance in a half-crouch, Vic sprawled backwards. The dodo trampled over top of him, stabbing down with its broad bill. An instinctive jerk of his head to one side saved Vic from having an ear impaled with the hooked end of the beak.
The blunt talons of the dodo’s feet still left little rivulets of blood behind as it raked his forehead while leaping off and racing towards Telford. Who stepped aside out of its path. As the dodo passed by her, she jabbed the muzzle of her pistol against its body and pulled the trigger. There was a soft hiss followed by a loud and indignant “Aaawwwk!” from the dodo as it ran off a few more steps and then dropped to the ground.
“Well, at least we’re not skunked now,” she remarked in a satisfied tone. She turned to extend a hand to Vic to help him up. “I nailed it, so you carry it.” She grinned at his bemused expression. “Think of it as part of your rookie initiation.”
Vic snorted but went over to comply. Taking out a plastic tie, he bound the dodo’s legs together then removed the small dart from the body before stuffing the bird carefully into his haversack, feet first. He paused for a moment before closing the flap over the bird’s head to take a closer look at its blunt bulbous bill with the sharp downturned beak tip. He brushed a hand across his own forehead, noticed the blood coating the fingertips.
“That crazy bird scratched me!” he exclaimed in disbelief.
Telford came over and examined his scratched-up forehead. “Yeah,” she tsked. “That’s gonna need a bit of ointment.” She pulled a first-aid pouch out of a coverall pocket. “Here, let me.” Taking a tiny tube and wet-wipe packet out of the pouch, she first swabbed away the blood then dabbed the tube against the claw marks. Telford inspected her work and nodded. “Okay, not really deep, the blood’s already drying up, so I think you can get by without a bandage as long as you don’t pick at it.”
Vic nodded. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” She shrugged and smiled. “Now let’s see about getting another one. Like I was saying, before we were so suddenly interrupted,” she pointed, “I thought I could hear something over that way.”
“That way” was also the direction from which the dodo had bolted out of the bushes. Pushing their way through the shrubbery, they found another little clearing with another smaller dodo squatted down in what both recognized as a nest. The female dodo, beak snapping loudly, glared at the two strange intruding creatures. Telford tapped Vic on the shoulder and jerked a thumb over her shoulder. Together, slowly, they retreated back through the bushes.
“Crap!” Telford spat in disgust as they moved quickly further away from the protective ring of shrubbery. “A nesting pair, and we’ve bagged the father.”
Vic looked back at the bushes. “I guess he was just trying to scare us off?”
Telford nodded. “And got tranqed for his trouble.” She sighed. “Well, it happens. The female would be okay on her own. She’d have to do some very quick foraging for food when she needs to eat, and also to feed the chick when it hatches.” She looked up and away. “But that doesn’t matter. We don’t separate mating pairs. That’s the rule too” She sighed. “We have to let him go. He’ll wake up in a couple of hours, no worse for wear.”
Vic nodded and shrugged off his haversack. Together they gently slipped the sleeping dodo out of the sack, slid him underneath the screen of concealing brush, and left him at the edge of the nesting site on the other side. Stepping quietly away, they left the clearing and headed back into the forest.
Another half hour’s tramping through the forest yielded no more dodoes for them to bag. No single dodoes, at least. Several times they came across nesting pairs, but always the two humans saw the nesting site well before the guardian male realized they were approaching. Telford changed direction each time and Vic followed her lead without objection.
They took a break at the one-hour mark. A large pair of sunken rocks in another little clearing provided makeshift seats for each of them while they munched protein bars and shared a canteen. Choruses of double-note high-low hootings, some soft yet loud, others fainter and farther away, sounded now and again from the surrounding forest. Various warblings, trills, and cheerups from other concealed avian choirs added to the daytime concert, with an occasional loud parrot-like squawk for a disastrously off-key note.
“So,” Vic remarked, handing the canteen over to Telford. “Three trips now?”
Cheeks dimpling in a broad grin, Telford took another sip before answering. “Yep. Recruited straight out of Skidegate College. I was doing a double-major at the time in botany and linguistics.” She noticed her partner’s raised eyebrows. “My main focus was on traditional herb lore medicines. I was thinking of going into genetic tracing later, if I’d stayed in college.” She favoured him with an appraising look. “You, I’d guess, came in through the high school Careers Day circuit?”
A sheepish grin and a quick nod. “Guilty,” Vic answered. “This one guy had a little table set up in the gym tucked into a corner, kind of, away from all the other bigger kiosks. No banner, no pamphlets, just someone in a business suit, sitting with his hands folded on the table. Pretty much everyone ignored him, checking out the displays for the Forces or the Mounties, and all the colleges and universities, along with Telus and other big companies.”
He shrugged. “I was curious. Wondered what he was all about. So I asked. He told me. Gave me a card. That was it. My guidance counsellor suggested I do an online follow-up. I sent an email. Got a form to fill out, asking about me, my studies, my grades, my interests, hobbies, “special skills”, and stuff. A week later, I get another email inviting me and my parents to come to Vancouver for an interview at the University of B.C.” Another shrug. “I got on as a summer intern after graduation.”
Telford handed the canteen over to him. “Nice. Anyway, yeah, three times for me now on the dodo run for the Bio guys.” Another broad smile. “Once for an egg collection trip, and twice now bagging dodoes. Got my own souvenir scar on the egg hunt. A very protective mother surprised me.”
Vic made a show of examining his partner. “Hidden up your sleeve like Della’s?”
Telford surprised him by dumping her haversack and then unzipping her coverall down to her waist. She slipped both bandoliers off her shoulders then quickly shrugged out of the coverall sleeves and pulled the top down to just below the top of her military-issue shorts. Mouth open, Vic noted how well-muscled and trim her abdomen was as she tugged up the bottom of her khaki-green T-shirt high enough to reveal a puckered almost-circular scar on her right side just below her rib cage.
She grinned at his sudden discomfiture, pulling her T-shirt back down again, and shrugging her coveralls back into place, leaving the zipper undone just at breast height. “I learned two things from my experience,” she said, as she set the bandoliers back in place. “One: always be on the watch and be prepared. And two: dodoes can jump. Not very high, but they can. Just like a chicken, and that middle toe claw can dig deep. Kept me sidelined for two weeks doing mission inventory for everybody else’s retrieval trips before they put me back on the roster.”
Vic’s hand went to his forehead. Telford smiled at his reaction.
“I wouldn’t worry. Those,” she pointed at the blood-crusted scratches dividing her partner’s forehead into three sections, “at most, will get you a warning from Della to be more careful next time.” She cocked her head, looking thoughtful. “Mind you, with the right kind of story to go with them, they could make nice ‘dueling scars’ to impress your girlfriend,”
Vic felt his cheeks start to burn. “I don’t have a girlfriend,” he mumbled.
Telford said nothing in response, but her soft brown eyes became thoughtful as she watched her young partner’s blush extend down his neck. She made a show of crumpling up her protein bar wrapper and tucking it away in a small coverall zipper pocket. Vic looked down at the ground until he could feel the tingling blood-rush fade away. When he looked up, Telford held out her hand for the canteen, capped it, and levered herself up from her rock-seat. Vic followed suit.
Without another word they set off into the woods again, back on the dodo hunt.
Luck changed for the better for them during the next half hour with two dodoes for their game bags. The first one fell to a double dose of tranquilizer as they caught the bird in a near cross-fire when it rushed between them across an open space in the game trail they were following.
Telford unslung her empty haversack first. “I’ve got this one,” she said, grabbing the sleeping dodo’s legs and binding them fast before hoisting it up. Vic helped her hold the open sack steady as she slipped the good-sized bird inside then tied the flap closed.
Soon after that encounter they pushed their way through some shrubbery, following a loud hooting call and found their next dodo, its stubby little wings spread out in what had to be a typical mating display. The surprised dodo closed its wings and began backing towards the underbrush and away from the two large and strange creatures.
“Keep him occupied!” cried Telford as she began a quick circling movement around the edge of the glade.
How? wondered Vic. Then he had a thought. Lifting his left arm slowly up, he closed his hand into a fist except for the index finger, which remained pointed at the dodo. The bird stopped, its eyes fixed on the extended fingertip. Vic slowly moved his arm back and forth, and grinned as the dodo’s head turned first one way then the other while it tracked the moving fingertip. Right up until the moment Telford’s tranq gun hissed. The dodo squawked, took a couple steps then keeled over.
“Nice work,” she said, smiling. “Clever idea that.”
Vic shrugged, still grinning. “I remembered seeing it in an old Paul Hogan movie. Figured it was worth a shot.”
Telford shook her head. “Life imitates Art. Gotta love it.” She regarded the dodo, then her partner. “Flip to see who carries this one?”
Vic shook his head. “Nah, I’ll take him.” After a few minutes spent settling their latest catch in his haversack, the two of them pushed their way back through the bushes and set off again along the trail.
“…it’s just a case of loonies and toonies,” Telford said, lifting a low-hanging branch out of the way as she let Vic pass by to take the point. “The U.N. acts as general manager to keep the Big 10 from creating some kind of temporal travel trust and also making sure the little nations get some benefits and use out of time travel. The universities provide the obvious technical expertise, and having the whole operation based out of U.B.C. was just a case of happy coincidence that the university has the only working Kyrie reactor not under either government control or in the hands of the private sector.”
Ahead, Vic paused along the almost-invisible game trail they were following, to lift another low-hanging branch, allowing Telford to resume the lead. “But in the end,” she continued, with a smiling nod of thanks as she brushed past him, “we still need the global corps, and they still want to see black in their digital ledgers. Which means even a simple zoological research-and-retrieval project like the dodo run has to show some kind of a profit sooner or later, and preferably sooner if possible.”
“So what’s that mean exactly?” Vic asked, ducking his head underneath the leafy end of one limb.
“Well,” Telford replied, looking over a shoulder, “if the breeding program proves successful and the folks in Bio give us the high sign on the biological exam, the island of Mauritius in our own time won’t be the only place where you could find large-as-life dodos squawking and scratching around again. They’d be available for purchase and exhibition in zoological gardens, of course, and people with money to spend for the next flavour of the hour in exotic pets. But the big thing would be the exotic animal husbandry market. Everyone enjoys buffalo burgers and wild boar sausage rolls these days. Imagine how a roast dodo sandwich would go over at your local Subway or Tim Horton’s, not to mention the high-end restaurants where they don’t put the prices on the menus.”
A skeptical grunt was Vic’s response. “Yeah, I dunno ‘bout that. Wasn’t there something in the mission extract that those early explorers who found the dodo didn’t think it was all that tasty?”
Telford shrugged. “Maybe it’s all in the prep. Not my worry. I’ll leave that to the masterchefs to figure—” She stopped suddenly.
“What th—?” Vic complained, almost colliding with her.
“Hst!” Telford turned, head cocked, the tip of a finger touching an ear, a fixed look of concentration on her mahogany features.
Vic closed his mouth on whatever else he’d had in mind to say, and listened. They both smiled at each other at the sound of a chorus of two-note hooting from further up the trail. The timbre of hoots, varying in range from a soft alto to a rumbling bass, suggested a large group of dodos not too far away.
Telford’s eyes sparkled. “We may beat the others back to the extraction point after all,” she said. “And get a record bag limit in the bargain.”
Pistols in hand, the two of them began making their way quickly, but quietly, along the trail.
“Treed by dodoes,” remarked Telford, her legs swinging back and forth in the empty air. “Well, that’s gotta be a new one!” She snorted with disgust.
Vic only grunted in reply. He was seated on a thick branch just a little higher than Telford’s and on the opposite side of the rough-ridged grey trunk of the tree where they’d been perched for the past five minutes. Below them on the ground, bills snapping with loud angry squawks stood a small group of several large and a few smaller dodoes, their beady eyes glaring up through the thin-leafed branches at the two humans. On the ground just beyond the circle of dodoes lay the tranquilizer pistols.
“How long do you think they’ll stick around?”
Telford shrugged. “Hard to say. Dodoes really aren’t a predator bird, though, as we both know,” she rubbed carefully at a buttock, “they sure can get aggressive when they want to be, especially when a large pack is involved. Or flock.” A pensive expression replaced her rueful look. “Or is it flight? Nah! A flight of dodoes sounds like an oxymoron, not to mention being impossible.”
Vic grimaced. “Thanks. Good to know. Nice to see you find this all ‘fascinating’ in a Vulcan sort of way.”
A little smile tugged at Telford’s mouth all the while she continued watching the dodoes gathered at the foot of the tree. “Wouldn’t be in the program, either one of us, if we weren’t as curious as cats. Right?” She glanced up at her partner. Who gave her a slow smile in response.
“Yeah, I guess so,” Vic conceded. “Can’t believe we both lost our guns. How’s the bum, by the way?”
“Sore. And I think that one,” she pointed at the largest of the dodoes down below, “managed to dig in deep and tear a nice little hole not just in my coveralls but in both my shorts and my unmentionables also.”
“Bleeding?”
Telford nodded, flashing a quick smile of appreciation at the concern in Vic’s voice. “A bit. Hard to really tell, but nothing to worry about, though, I think. A bit of ointment and a bandage should cover it all, literally and figuratively.”
Vic nodded, then, in a shared joking tone, “Guess no trips to the beach for awhile, eh?”
Telford snorted, and laughed. “Don’t you believe it! First thing I did after that egg run when I got my scar was to celebrate my time jump debut by going to a beach party with friends. Nothing stops this curvy girl from strutting her big bikini bottom.” She looked up at Vic and winked. “And I do look good in a bikini, I do.”
Vic’s mouth dropped open just in time for a gnat to fly inside. Any reply he might have made went unsaid as he hacked and choked. Telford scrambled quickly, but carefully, to her feet on her branch, reaching one hand up and out to help steady him on his own branch while her other hand and arm wrapped around the tree trunk to anchor herself.
“Sorry,” she said, after his coughing fit had subsided. “You okay now?”
Vic nodded, gasping “So…any ideas?” He gestured at the dodoes, quiet now but still glaring up at the two treed humans.
“Lots. But they all involve either net guns or tasers or both, none of which we have here on the dodo run.” She sighed, settling back down on her branch. “Pity. Because I know just who I’d like to use either one on, my first choice being a taser.” She returned glare for glare with the biggest one of the dodoes, the obvious group leader.
She nodded. “That’s right, big fella, I’m looking at you. Make me drop my gun, will you? You’ll be a perfect candidate for dodoturducken.” She made the twin-finger pointing gesture from her eyes then outwards towards the alpha dodo. But she was smiling as she did it.
Vic scoffed. “So, what then? Sit up here and wait?”
Telford shook her head. “No way, we can’t afford it.” She looked up and over at Vic. “We really can’t. At most we have one more hour before the portal reopens. Everyone has to be on-site and ready to step through when it does. And, no,” she continued in answer to his unspoken question, “I doubt any of the others will be back at the rendezvous early enough to even consider whether or not we might need help. When the portal opens, if we’re not there, then Della, Djan, Ranjit and Marta will just have to go through without us.”
Vic said nothing in response but the panic was clear to see in his eyes. Telford smiled and shook her head again. “No, we’re not going to end up stuck here in pre-colonial Mauritius with a bunch of dodoes either. Della will alert Control as soon as she steps through and they’ll start right away setting up for a retrieve-and-rescue jump to bring us home. They’ll just need a bit of time for the TempNav system to calculate a new set of coordinates so that there’s no portal overlap. That’s the good news.”
Vic blinked. “And the bad news?”
Telford shrugged. “We may be here anywhere from an hour to a day at most before the new portal opens up. Della will leave the beacon behind to serve as the site marker. But that’s not the worst of it.” Seeing Vic frown, she sighed. “We both would end up with black marks in our records because we needed rescuing.”
Vic looked down at the dodoes then back at her. “Black marks?”
She nodded. “Getting injured on a trip just gets you sidelined for however long is necessary until you heal up, then you’re back on the roster. Unless you suffered some really major injury, in which case, you get ‘retired’ from the active list and offered a desk job or early release from your employment contract with a nice severance package.”
Telford glanced towards Vic then looked down towards the ground and their mutual guard. “But needing a special portal jump all for yourself because you missed the boat the first time? That means an inquiry, and maybe even a competency review hearing to decide whether or not you get to stay in the program. Time jumps are expensive. At best the tribunal might just recommend striking your name off the list for future trips while you wait out an ‘indefinite’ probation period.” She grimaced. “It’s happened at least once that I know about to a fellow a few years ago with the Alexandria Library recovery project. That guy’s not with the program anymore. He bailed without even bothering to see if he’d at least rate a ‘tin parachute’ once he figured out that ‘indefinite’ could last a pretty long time.”
“Huh,” Vic replied, with a huff.
“Yeah,” agreed Telford, frowning. “No way am I letting a dunce of dodoes take me out of the running when Control starts drawing up the short list for the Tahltan bear dog retrieval project. It’s a cultural thing,” she added, seeing her partner’s quizzical look. “I’m one of the few people in the program who is both Haida and female. Early Haida Gwaii was a matriarchal culture for the most part. Still is, more or less, these days. Families still trace their clan ties and roots through the mother’s side. So I’ve got some cultural authority on my side. Plus, besides my mother tongue, I also speak Tlingit thanks to a great-uncle, along with Tsimshian for trader talk, and some Carrier. Real assets for a retrieval group planning to operate in pre-contact Haida Gwaii.”
She snorted in disgust. “None of which will help my chances enough, though, if I end up stuck in ‘review’ mode when we get back.”
Hearing a crinkling sound, she glanced up in surprise to catch Vic in the act of peeling back the wrapper on a protein bar. He shrugged, and took a bite. “I’m a nervous nibbler,” he muttered, crumbs falling out of his mouth. “What can I say? When I think, I eat.”
Telford scoffed but also smiled and resumed looking down at the ground. Idly, she watched the crumbs patter through the leaves to land near the foot of the tree. Saw one of the smaller dodoes peck at one large crumb. It seemed to consider the new and strange possible-food item. Then it began pecking at the other crumbs. Several of its fellow dodoes, large and small, crowded together to join in the pecking.
Telford looked up at Vic. Who was looking back at her. He held up the partly-eaten protein bar and, with one quick move, stripped off the rest of the wrapper and began crumbling it up in his two hands. Telford dug in her pouch for several bars even as she carefully stood up again on her branch. She handed the bars, along with a small plastic zip bag, around the tree trunk to Vic who, after a moment’s hesitation, took them with one hand, the other holding the crumbled bits of protein bar.
“Okay,” Telford said, “you fill up that bag and get ready for ‘snack time’.” She nodded down at the dodoes gathered at the foot of the tree, some still vainly pecking away in search of non-existent protein bar bits, the rest staring with new interest up at the humans. “Dribble a few more crumbs when I tell you just to make sure you have everybody’s attention and then, when I count ‘three,’ throw all the rest as far from the tree as you can.”
“What about you?” Vic mumbled, carefully holding the open bag in one hand while tearing at the end of a protein bar wrapper with his teeth. “What are you going to do?”
Telford, crouched and ready to leap off of her branch, gestured down to the ground at the alpha dodo, who had ignored the brief rain of crumbs, preferring to keep a glaring watch on the two strange creatures he and his fellows had treed. “I’m betting a certain somebody is going to stay here with us while everyone else runs off after the free food.” She smiled as she slipped a tranq dart from its bandolier case and held it gripped in one hand. “In fact, I’m hoping for it. Because I got an itch in my butt that tells me it’s payback time.”
They burst out of the woods onto the beach. Looking ahead, Vic saw the other four members of the team in a loose group just a few paces back from the marker beacon. Della turned around just as Telford sprinted up to a stop in a spray of sand, a grin of mixed triumph and satisfaction spread across her face. Vic almost stumbled as he came to a halt just behind her. He still staggered a bit as he fought to keep his balance while at the same time trying to shift the heavily-loaded haversack on his back.
Della eyed the big dodo head sticking out from under the flap of Vic’s haversack. “Looks like you two did well for yourselves,” she remarked, turning to face Telford, and glancing at her wrist chrono. “Cutting it a mite close too. Problems?”
Telford shrugged. “Not once we got our butts in gear.” Both she and Vic traded knowing smiles.
Della noted the silent smiling exchange. She also noted the blood-dried scars on Vic’s forehead and Telford’s coverall, pulled down to her waist with the arms tied behind her, covering her backside. “Well, then, I look forward to reading each of your contributions to the overall mission report.” She indicated the rest of the team. “At least you had better luck than the rest of us. Apparently we showed up during the early stage of the mating-and-nesting season this time.”
A stone-faced Marta and stoic Ranjit each turned to display their flat and empty haversacks. Djan held up the egg container one-handed, giving it a quick shake with no apparent concern at all for the safety of any shifting contents. “Simeon and Riva have no worries this go-round about their egg-collection record,” he said, with a sheepish smile.
Before either Telford or Vic could respond, the portal opened, its blue glow beckoning.
“Time to go,” Della said, all business now. She waved for Marta and Ranjit to pass through first.
Djan followed quickly after. “Exit, with dodoes, stage right!” he said as he stepped into the blue glow.
Della motioned for the two younger members of the team to step through.
“See you on the other side,” Telford said, with a smile, to Vic. “Maybe after we’re done with the debrief, you and I should go to the beach.”
She grinned and shook her head as his face immediately turned bright red again. “Making you blush is like fishing for oolichan,” she chuckled. “Way too easy.” Then her grin softened to a friendly smile. “Still, it’s nice to meet a guy who can still blush.”
Before Vic could answer back, Telford stepped through the portal with a wave and a wink, and vanished.
He huffed a bit. But with a smile, he followed after his partner.
Della paused a moment to collect and pocket the beacon, then quickly stepped through, vanishing within the portal. The blue glow lingered for a few moments more then winked out.
Soft hootings from the shoreline forest drifted over the empty beach.
