Dream d1154-s: The Perimeter at First Light

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood at the edge of what we had made, and it was more than I remembered.

The settlement spread behind me, beacon pulse at its center, steady as a heartbeat, amber-white against the stripped-down sky. The towers we had built and the towers we had salvaged rose together in the middle distance, and smoke from the forecasting station drifted east, thinning as it climbed. I had walked out to the perimeter at first light just to look back. To see it whole.

Lano was with me. The small white dog pressed against my ankle for a moment, then lifted his nose to the wind, turning his head toward the relay ridge where the Network Specialist was already moving along the line of repeaters, checking each one by hand. I could see the figure in the far distance, methodical, unhurried.

Closer in, the Wire Man was at the signal room. I could hear the telegraph through the open window, its measured clicking a kind of rhythm now, part of the settlement's breath. The Philosopher sat in the reading room doorway with papers spread on both knees. The Listener was somewhere I could not see, but I knew by the way the broadcast antenna was angled that she had been at the station since before dawn.

The Builder was moving between structures, carrying nothing, just looking and touching and occasionally writing in the notebook that never left his coat. The Weather Reader had climbed the forecasting tower before sunrise. She called something down to the Dreamer, who stood below and recorded it in the log.

The white crane passed overhead in a long low arc and did not land.

Lano turned away from the wind and looked at me. He sat down in the dust, tail sweeping once, and said - quietly, as if stating something that needed no explanation - "aqui."

Here.

I looked back at the settlement. The beacon pulsed. The infrastructure held its low constant note. Every structure had been placed by someone who had returned, who had decided to stay and make something that would outlast the decision itself. The light through the stripped towers had that quality it always has in this era, neither morning nor not-morning, diffuse and honest, without comfort or threat.

I walked back in. Lano trotted ahead. There was work to do, and we both knew where it was.