Dream d1382-s: Curls of Cedar

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the path to the workshop clearing was marked by sawdust. Not scattered, not accidental - a steady trace of it along the left shoulder of the trail, as if the wood had been carried out this way for years and had left a record of its own passage.

The Wireman was at the bench when Lano and I arrived. He was shaping a length of cedar with a draw knife, pulling long curls from the wood that fell to the ground and caught the morning light. He did not look up. He did not need to. The sound of Lano's claws on the packed earth was introduction enough.

Behind the workshop, in a narrow garden bordered by wire frames, the Dreamer was pressing specimens between boards. Leaves, seed cases, the dried heads of some plant I didn't recognize. She weighted each board with a flat stone and moved to the next without ceremony.

"The signal," I said.

The Wireman set down the draw knife. He picked up one of the cedar curls and turned it in his fingers, examining the grain.

"I know," he said. That was all.

The Dreamer didn't turn around. "I've been seeing it for three days. Not in the data. In the images. The way the light falls wrong in the afternoon - like something is bending the angle slightly. I couldn't name it until the Weather Reader sent his numbers."

Lano's ears had been pricked since we left the settlement. Now she sat at the edge of the clearing, faced the direction of the Undrawn Edge, and said quietly: "Allá."

The Wireman looked at the dog. Then at me.

"That's the first time she's done that," I said.

"No it isn't," the Dreamer said. She turned from the specimens. "She did it at the caves. In the dark, before any of us knew what the caves were."

I had forgotten that. Or I had filed it somewhere I didn't check often.

The Wireman began rolling his tools into a leather cloth. Methodical, unhurried, each tool in its slot. The cedar curls stayed on the ground. He wasn't coming back to this bench today.

"I'll need an hour," the Dreamer said. She was already sorting which specimens to pack, which to leave under stone. She made the distinction quickly, without hesitation, as if the specimens themselves had already told her which ones mattered for the road.

The signal was faint. Even knowing it was there, I couldn't feel it with anything human. But Lano stayed oriented toward the edge of the map, ears up, nose working. The air above the clearing was clear and steady. Nothing visible. Only the sawdust, and the cedar smell, and whatever was out there, waiting to be named.