The loss of the onions and the crash of the glass pan, followed by Mom's confession about her own Gate, sort of ruined the mood for a family dinner at home with Síle. So the four of us rode in the family boat-sized SUV to forage for some alternate dinner. We called her Shirley, as in, "Shirley we don't need to fill up again already."

Ha ha.

"Like a royal carriage," I heard her say quietly at one point. We were sitting in the seats behind my parents, and I reached over quietly to squeeze her hand. It felt unreasonably soft under my fingers. She looked over at me with a slightly strained smile and squeezed back.

Eventually we decided on one of our favourite local pizza places, eating in their little dine-in area.

"Síle, do you eat meat?" Mom asked in her slightly strange-sounding Clair when we arrived.

Síle nodded. "Yes, ma'am. I'm from a farm. We don't waste."

For once, none of us felt like negotiating crusts and toppings. We just let Dad order something.

We found a table and sat down to wait. I'd gotten a bottle of cola and unscrewed the lid, bringing about a hiss that I hardly noticed anymore, but Síle jumped briefly. We all laughed.

I handed her the bottle, and she looked at my quizzically.

"It's a drink," I said in Clair.

She took a cautious sip, immediately going through a whole litany of facial expressions, causing the rest of us to chuckle again.

"So sweet," she said, handing it back to me.

One of the staff brought our pizzas after a few more minutes, and Síle was treated to another new experience. A more pleasant one, I gathered.

"Do you know how to make this?" she asked me. "I hope you do."

Mom's eyes kept drifting to my forearms, even though I'd covered Danna's markings with a jacket. I'd hoped to spare her thinking about it while we ate, but it looked like that wasn't happening. I guess I couldn't blame her.

"So..." Dad said, trailing off.

I think all of us were feeling a kind of unbearable pressure that no one was sure how to release. Mom put down her pizza and sighed.

"You're a grown ... woman, now, Alyx," Mom said. "But I can't do this again, especially not with my own child. Please understand that when you're making plans."

I felt tears coming and reached over to Mom's hands, giving them a squeeze. Had they always been so slight, so fragile?

"I don't have any plans to abandon you," I said. "Either of you. I have some ideas. But... on that side, they haven't had Fí-Réalta for a long time. They need my help. For the first time, I have purpose."

"What if you hadn't gotten curious and walked into the gateway?" Mom asked. "What then?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I guess they'd endure. But they do need my help. Without me, it would just take that many more years."

"But why you..." she trailed off.

I guessed she was having trouble thinking "us" and "them", with quantity one "them" sitting at the table eating pizza with "us".

We all took a pizza break after that, chewing on our thoughts and also on our pizza. Randomly, I thought how strange it would be if the police stopped us for some reason, and they tried to ID Síle. No identification, no birth records, no English... because she literally just walked out of a fantasy realm. She didn't exist in our universe a few hours ago. Síle had literally crossed between worlds to support me.

I found that I was looking at her, and she looked back at me quizzically with cheese trailing out of her mouth. I started laughing, and then she started laughing, but she still had cheese hanging out, which made her laughing that much more awkward, which made me laugh more...

No, there was nothing fantasy or unreal about this pretty girl, nor her world. She mattered to me, and so did her world.

When I caught my breath again, I repeated my thoughts to Mom.

"Sometimes," I finished up, "doing the right thing isn't the same as doing the convenient or easy thing."

"Ugh, where did you hear that drivel, anyway," she asked rhetorically, rolling her eyes.

Of course, she herself had said it often. That was exactly where I got that "drivel".

"I don't want to just ride off into the sunset," I continued on. "You and Dad are really important to me. I have to go back soon, but I will be keeping in touch. One way or another."

"Ugh," I muttered as we walked outside the next morning. The temperature was already over 30C. Thankfully Mom and Síle were not too differently sized, so she was able to borrow some cooler clothes. It was only then that I started thinking about all of the strange differences between worlds. Síle looked sort of Irish, so maybe she would get sunburn; but then again, she grew up on a farm, so maybe she was used to being in the sun; but then again, what if Earth's sun was subtly different than Shanaclair's, and it was more harmful to her? And that wasn't even starting to cover things like, what if we had different diseases? What if our microbiomes didn't process each other's food the same way? What if the relative concentrations of gases in the air were different?

I shook my head. All I could do was try my best. I pulled out some sunscreen and started slathering it on my exposed skin. I held it out to Síle, and she asked, "What is it?"

"Sun protection," I replied, and a little "o" of understanding briefly showed on her face.

When we'd finished with that chore, I said, "Okay, let's go to the SkyTrain."

"SkyTrain?" she asked.

I smiled. "An Lien!"

I guess we could've just driven over and parked, but I wanted to show Síle a little more of my own world.

She was constantly craning her neck at everything, eyes wide. The automated traffic lights with audible crossing sounds. The automated ticket machines. The automated ticket gates. The automated doors. The trains with no drivers.

"It's a whole world that runs itself," she said when we got on board the train. She shook her head in disbelief.

"I guess it is," I replied.

Then the automated announcement started, and she just sighed.

Another bus later, we were at the University of BC campus. We had several things to do there in the day to come, but the first would be the most unpleasant: talking with someone about withdrawing.