While we ate lunch, I'd gotten a reply back from the message I sent before lunch.

Hey Prasad you at the lab?

Ya, come on down

"One more stop," I said to Síle. "Is that okay?"

She nodded.

Backsliding on body changes was painful, but really, it was just heading back to where I was a couple of weeks ago. But losing my ability to talk with Síle...

It hurt.

A few minutes later, we walked into the Macleod building and down a hallway. I noticed Síle was staring around at everything again, and I had to smile.

The lab was empty besides Prasad, so I knocked near the door to avoid startling him. He didn't react, and I could see that he had his earbuds in. Probably rocking out to something while he was soldering on whatever he was soldering on.

If he didn't have the iron out, I would probably just walk up behind him and scare him half to death, but I didn't want him to burn whatever he was working on, or himself, so I got my phone out again.

Yo. We're here.

I watched in amusement as he put down the iron, looked over at his phone, hit the button to see who sent the message, then whipped around to see us standing there. I gave him a peace sign for good measure, as he took his earbuds out.

"Hey Alyx," he said, then turned to look at Síle, doing the introvert dance of looking back and forth between her and me, pointing at her, looking at me with confusion.

"Síle, Prasad," I said to her, then I said to him, "Prasad, Síle."

"Bannache," she said, waving.

"Um, hi?" Prasad replied, also waving.

"So," I said to him, "say I have two USB devices. Or let's be more specific, why not, and say that I have two phones. I want to connect them with a cable and tether one from the other. So far, so good?"

"Okay."

"There are two complications," I went on. "Well... three complications. The first one is that the cable needs to be about 15m long. Do you think there would be issues with like... attenuation, or lag?"

He held his hand out and wobbled it back and forth.

"If it was plugged into a PC or something, maybe not? Tethering from a phone... that's trickier. The signal's probably weak. I wouldn't try it with USB-C, either. Slo-mo USB."

I nodded. "Okay, makes sense. Second complication, the bigger one..."

I laid out my scheme for Prasad, who rightfully still had no idea why I was interested in this science project, but that was okay. With his help, I would be able to build it much more quickly.

"Sorry for being boring," I said to Síle in Clair.

She shook her head. "It's all so strange and new."

It had taken us until dinnertime to get my first prototype built, at least the electronics part. Mom had sent me a text asking when we were coming home, so I told her we were on our way.

Over the rest of the week, I took Síle to see some things around Vancouver. We weren't going to be flying anywhere or anything, but we drove along the Strait, walked all around downtown, saw the central library, had food at Lonsdale Quay, hiked around Stanley Park. I was able to relax a little bit again, and Síle started re-teaching me some of the Clair I seemed to have forgotten after being cut off from Danna.

But always, somewhere in the back of my mind, was the impending return date. So many things to look forward to, but the tourist run was reminding of what I'd be losing, too.

"I need someone to drive us back up to the hiking trail this weekend," I said over dinner with my family on Thursday. "It might be a little while before we're coming back down, and I doubt the ski resorts want me parking there for months."

Mom set her fork down on her plate and stared into the distance.

"How can I convince you?" she asked in a small voice, finally.

"Unfortunately, you can't," I replied with a frown. "I still need to go back."

"Can you convince her not to go?" she asked Síle in Clair.

"Mom, that's not fair," I said.

"I'm sorry, I can't," Síle replied without missing a beat.

Mom quietly started eating again.

"I want you two to come with me for a little bit," I said to them.

"To the gate or whatever it is?" Dad asked.

"No. Past that."

Mom looked at me sharply. "How can you expect me to re-open a wound like that? If it even works!"

"I'm sorry," I said, giving her a moment before going on. "But it's for a hope that you can heal that wound."

Happily, I discovered that the bits and bobs I'd ordered online earlier in the week had come in. I dug into the boxes and verified that I had everything, and I used a whole power bar charging everything.

The first test always sucked. But I only had two tries.

So it had to work.

Early Friday, we headed back up the mountain in my own car, with all of the gear, plus a battery powered soldering iron, an ohmmeter, and some other sundries in case I needed to make field repairs.

"I need to go test something," I'd said to Síle. "It would help if you come."

"Of course!"

I had a list of several things I needed to test on this trip.

When we reached the side path heading to La Lune, I verified that it was the right place - I could see the Gate itself in the distance.

Through that arch, somehow, almost two months had passed.

I pointed and said, to Síle, "Can you see the Gate?"

"Mmhmm," she replied, nodding.

Hmm. I guess we don't get to explore question that today.

I walked between the rocks and down the side path, a little way into the trees, and stopped short of the Gate to get set up.

No, wait. If we go through, I'll have ten times as much time to work on it, and we can speak better.

"We're going back through, for a short time," I said to her. "Is that okay?"

She nodded, and I took her hand and walked forward.

Everything wavered around us, and then we were standing on the small clearing on the Shanaclair side of the gate. Thankfully, the sun was up, but the two moons were hanging there, and as always, I could see weaving and wavering pastel patterns of the Leys in the sky.

I could also feel those Leys flowing through me, around me, around Síle... I'd had no idea how just a week of being away could affect me. It felt like taking a breath of clean air after weeks of a smoggy city. How could I have ever considered leaving this?

"Alyx, are you okay?" I heard Síle saying from a distance.

Daughter, I thought I heard Danna say.

Suddenly, I was back in the present again, one hand on a shoulder of a confused and worried Síle.

"Yeah, I think so," I replied, nodding and looking around. "I got a little hello message."

Síle laughed, the first real laugh I'd heard from her in days. It made me happy to have brought her along, but I also felt bad for the past week.

I hugged her tightly, receiving an equally fierce hug in return.

I unpacked my gear, then, onto a relatively flat and clean bit of ground. Two cheap cell phones. A 15-metre USB-compatible cable with weatherized connectors on each end. One little black project box, courtesy of Prasad, with a 10x speed buffer. Three solar battery bricks. And two clear plastic boxes, lockable.

When I had it all laid out in front of me, it looked ridiculous, especially under the beautiful aurora skies and two moons. I was in a fantasy world with magic, on my way to being a magical princess, and I was doing engineering work.

Welp. I guessed that was just the type of princess I was going to be.

Half an hour later, I had things more or less hooked up. I just needed to carry one of the plastic boxes back through La Lune.

"Okay, here we go," I told Síle. The Clair was flowing through me less hesitantly after I "reconnected" on that side. "Just hold on to this end of the cable, right here. And I'm going to walk through the Gate again. If anything happens to me, or I don't come back through within two hours, go ahead back to Fleuve Clair."

I could think of about a million things that could go wrong, but there was only one way to test.

I held the box and coil of wire tightly and walked through, feeling the blurring, and I came out onto Earth.

I had twelve minutes before Síle headed back into town. No time to lose.

I turned around and looked back at the Gate for the first test. The cable was just eerily hanging mid-air, ending abruptly at the Gate. I tugged on it and it held steady. I pumped a fist. Yuss!

"You're probably better off putting the buffer on the fast phone side," Prasad had said. "It's going to be harder to adapt to a 120Mbit USB stream than a 1.2Mbit stream."

That was plenty. So the buffer was on the Shanaclair side of the Gate.

I tried to find a place that the solar panel could get some sunlight, though it was tough under the trees. For the initial test, though, all I really needed was to see if I could get some data through. The direct tether test had worked, without the buffer or the Gate, so the cable was good. I had put a temporary data SIM into the Earth-side phone and turned on tethering.

Time to go back. About three minutes had passed.

"I was starting to worry," Síle said as I blurred back through.

"All according to plan," I replied, grinning. "I was only back there for three minutes, believe it or not."

She shook her head.

That little manoeuvre cost us thirty minutes, I thought.

I picked up the phone on the Shanaclair side and checked its status. No USB connection icon.

Grr.

I pulled out a USB connector and attached it to the raw cable hanging disturbingly out of the Gate. Checking the power pins, I found that they actually showed power, though it was a much lower current than expected.

I guess that makes sense, I thought. Electrons would be slowing down by ten times.

Err, no... The electrons aren't moving slower. The seconds on this side are shorter. Same great voltage, only a tenth of the calories.

I felt like one of those lewd, blushing anime memes. There was so much science to be done there.

The data pins also showed an occasional blip. So something was happening there, however slowly. Unfortunately, the fault had to be something with the buffer box. Or the current drop.

"Be right back," I said to her again. I blurred through the Gate, grabbed the phone on that side, and then back through. It had taken me about 20 seconds; for Síle, I was gone for about three and a half minutes. I loaded everything back into my day pack.

"How did it go?" she asked.

"Better than I thought, actually," I replied. "How would you like some food in civilization? Fox and Owl?"