1. Let me thread you a story… (1-17)
  2. Portalville has been on summer vacation. Yep, that’s right, the whole danged town. We needed a break from our day-to-day reality.
  3. So we hired us a whole mess of buses and drove them through the portal after which Portalville is named.
  4. We came out in another plain of existence, somewhere folks could all agree about things and where no one felt better than anyone else.
  5. Clearly, not any place on this earth.
  6. Now, Portalville is a pretty friendly place under normal circumstances and we mostly get along with each other right nice.
  7. But sometimes it all gets a bit much, especially when outside agitators come to town and demand we take sides in their outside arguments.
  8. It gets wearying, and if you add into that the tendency of most folks in town towards summer seasonal affective disorder…
  9. Well, like I said, time for a break. So, Mayor Begay ordered up those buses. We had the dire wolves manning the barricades on Route 40,
  10. let the Rock tribe seal up the passes through the Imogen Mountains, and told Dennis the Toll Troll to shut down the Wynotte Bridge—
  11. although the mayor told him he still wasn’t allowed to eat anyone who tried to cross. We sure hope he kept his word there.
  12. With the town sealed off from the world and our minds at ease about invasion, we took to the portal and had us a fine time.
  13. ‘Course, vacation always has to end sometime. The kids had to get back to school, the maintenance crews had to get back to work.
  14. And running away from problems never does any good in the long run. Not while you’re a living, breathing human being.
  15. Ain’t none of us dead yet, and while you’re drawing air into your lungs you need to be part of the world. Or you ain’t really living.
  16. So yep, we’re back. We’re still breathing. For now, anyway. All I can truly say for sure is that we’re back for today.
  17. But then, today is all you ever have, ain’t it?

This tale can also be found on Twitter @downportalville.