For this week’s Sunday Snippet I’ve chosen an excerpt from a future episode of Through the Portal Storm to share with you. I’m having a lot of fun working on this story, and I hope you enjoy reading this excerpt.

Tye stared at the maps. He’d hung up the map of the unicorn populations, at least the wild herds, on the wall, marking places where they had samples with a pin. A tiny piece of paper listed the primary genetic markers that he’d found in the area, but so far the populations were nearly identical. They gathered in the room with the portal in the evenings to have dinner and discuss the day’s work. Leianne had returned to the lab, but kept to herself, and Tye wondered what had happened to pull her away. Even Dios seemed more reserved, though after the afternoon he’d spent showing Tye around the capital city, from the parks to a sculpture garden full of various iterations of unicorns, he’d thought maybe he’d see more of him. He hadn’t, and Tye wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

“Matriea wants you to go out to the herd again tomorrow. Khyr has requested you and wants an update on your magical training,” Leianne said before refilling her glass.

“I’ve been too focused in the lab,” Tye said. “I’ll go see her, and Khyr, but I don’t think I’ll have anything new to tell them.” He stared into his drink.

Light flashed across the portal like a jagged bolt of lightning. Tye turned to stare at it, wondering if someone else might be coming through. The colors he remembered, sometimes even in his dreams, swirled across the surface of the portal, as if someone had dropped paint and were spinning it around like a vintage toy he’d had as a child. Even Dios and Leianne turned to look.

“Are you expecting someone?”

Leianne shook her head. “No, but there are powerful magic storms to the north. Our communication with them has been disrupted for a few days now. That must be what it is.” She didn’t sound so sure.

Tye accepted her explanation, though he didn’t like it. Having been here a few weeks, the initial furor over his arrival had died down. People accepted he was a portal founding, and when he didn’t do anything odd or cause a scene, for the most part they forgot about him. But he couldn’t help but wonder what was happening on earth. How did people handle is disappearance? He imagined newspaper headlines about one, or maybe more, he didn’t know, missing in the storm and presumed dead. By now someone probably had packed up his apartment. Maybe even threw it all in the trash. The book he’d left on his nightstand would remain unfinished; the genetic work he was doing in his spare time, correlating studies, looking for new research, all those files would have to stay on a hard drive that may not even still exist. He watched the lighting flash across the portal, until it faded away, like his existence on earth.

“My father is sick. I haven’t wanted to put any additional pressure on you, but we fear that it’s the same disease that’s taking the unicorns too soon,” Leianne said.

“I’m sorry,” Tye replied. “I wish—”

“You’re working as much as you can. Some would say too much.” She cast a glance toward Dios and something unspoken passed between them. “It’s not your fault. I see now that I was probably going about this the wrong way. But we were all doing the best that we could. I’d always known this would happen. I’d just hoped that I would find an answer before it did.”

“How long…” Tye couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence. The weight of his responsibilities sat upon him heavily, and he couldn’t imagine Leianne losing her father simply because he couldn’t find the answers quick enough.

“We don’t know,” she said. “It could be years. It could only be a few weeks. Once signs of the illness begin our physicians have found it impossible to stop.”

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