After our easy, light-hearted banter on the way back to the Gate, it felt oppressive to be driving in an enforced quiet back down to Vancouver. We tried it right past the Gate; I understood less Clair already, dwindling by the minute.

I turned on my tune streaming and opened the window a bit for some air. Síle turned to see what I was doing, and she opened her window a little bit too, putting her face in the stream of air coming in from outside. Watching her reminded me of a dog putting its face out the window of a moving car. I tried not to laugh, but that just made the snort-laugh sound that much weirder when it came out anyway. She looked over at me quizzically, and I shrugged. She put her face back in the air stream and said "based" in her Clair-accented English, totally deadpan. Of all the words I taught her...

The sun was high in the sky, still somehow early afternoon on Friday in spite of our overnight trip. I didn't think this particular aspect of life in two worlds would ever get more sensible on a gut level.

"Want some breakfast?" I asked her in Clair.

We slid into a booth, and the waiter started on the usual questions - can I get you started with drinks - let me know when you're ready. I just ordered us some water to start with.

Síle was running her fingers along the menu.

"The words are almost familiar," she said. "What should I get?"

"These are French," I replied, pointing out a few words. "They're most like Clair. These others are English."

"Waaah," she voiced in what sounded like bemusement.

"Salty or sweet?" I asked.

I noticed she had a bit of a sweet tooth in Fleuve Clair, and she didn't surprise me at all by asking, "Maybe sweet?"

"This is sweet fried bread," I said, trying to describe pancakes, "with fruit and cream."

As I went through some of the options, I started to realize how little I knew about the agriculture and food of Shanaclair. A few of the fruits had similar equivalents, but many... I had no idea.

How did I even get started describing what "cinnamon roll French toast" was, without giving a cooking class I didn't have words for?

When our order came out, Síle was delighted by everything, especially the fancifully cut fruit. She'd landed on strawberry banana pancakes, and that had also come with an assortment of other fruit on the side - more strawberries, cantaloupe, watermelon, pineapple.

"This is sooo good," she said after a few bites of everything.

I also offered some fresh orange juice I'd ordered, and we ended up sharing that. I ordered an omelette for myself, at least partially so we'd have some salty on the table for her to try, and that also didn't disappoint her.

At the end, I paid with my phone, and she mimed placing something down and said, "beep!"

"I'll miss the beep," I replied wistfully.

My parents weren't home from work when we drove back, so I recharged all of the electronics and started downloading as many textbooks as I could, from UBC, onto my laptop. Officially, they were for loan only; unofficially, I was going somewhere that DRM wouldn't work. I had already downloaded a copy of Wikipedia to a flash drive.

I had no intention of going in unprepared.

I figured I would pretty much be getting a new wardrobe in Shanaclair, but I still packed some old standbys I was fond of, including some androgynous swim gear. A few technical pieces, like my fancy rain coat, also went in.

That done, I pulled up the quick web site I'd made earlier in the week. I had no idea what my internet situation would be, as the months went by, and I needed this data for the long term; so I set up a really simple free tier cloud service to receive telemetry from the black box I'd made with Prasad.

Telemetry from another reality.

That still kind of excited me, somehow, in spite of the dry subject. In any case, I'd also made a little graph showing trends over time. It had started out with fake data, but by that point, I was receiving a little blip every six minutes or so. As I was watching, a new one popped in.

"What's that?" Síle asked, walking up behind me.

"Hellos from Shanaclair," I replied, smiling. I pointed at the new dot that had just popped in. "Each one is one hour. I'll explain more when we get back."

She sat on the bed and continued to stare at the screen. We were still a bit early for my parents getting home, so I did some analysis on the data I'd received so far. In the time since we'd come back to my Earth home, about 30 hours had passed in Shanaclair. It wasn't really enough for a proper analysis, but I could still draw a pretty straight line through the averages so far. I didn't see any acceleration in that line, but it would be a while before I did.

But what I did see... was good news, so far. The current factor was about 10.004; with the rate of change I saw, it would be about 9.1001 in one Shanaclair year. Thankfully, I'd added some code to the black box to adapt to the changing nano-offsets.

I only then realized I'd been mumbling to myself out loud, a bad habit from thinking hard. Worse, I hadn't been doing anything with my voice, and it had pretty much reverted to its pre-Shanaclair register.

I was busy feeling mortified when something warm and soft dropped into the space between my head, neck, and shoulder. I looked over; Síle had rested her forehead on my shoulder. I skritched the top of her head, and she suddenly threw her arms around me, squeezing.

"Fil do mo," she mumbled into my shoulder. Come back to me.

"Mo... ici," I said, knowing it was broken Clair, but not really caring. I'm right here. And the gap could be bridged. It could.

Síle sat back up and rotated my desk chair around so I was facing her. She was doing that thing, looking right into my eyes. I was never sure how to respond to eye contact like that, but somehow, it came naturally enough to me in that moment. This girl from another world who I'd only spent about three weeks with, but who felt like someone I'd known for years... who had followed me fearlessly into another world...

Before I knew what was happening, she was closing her eyes and leaning over, and then so was I. Our first kiss probably only lasted a few seconds, but it felt like a million years.

And then we separated, and I saw the warm smile spread across her face as she whispered, "Mo Alyx." My Alyx.

"Mo Síle," I replied back.

It felt like a ritual, a bond, and that was right.