Dream d1392-s: The Joint Is Sound

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the path arrived at a clearing before I expected it to, the way paths do in dreams - not gradually but all at once, the trees stepping back to reveal a workshop and the smell of fresh shavings and the sound of a plane moving along a board.

The Builder was at the bench. She didn't look up when Lano and I came through on the footpath. She was fitting a joint, testing the fit by feel, turning the piece in her hands the way she tested walls and foundations - with her weight, with her patience.

"Signal's still faint," she said, still not looking up. "Weather Reader has the numbers. I have the feel of it."

Behind the workshop, pressed specimens were laid out in careful rows on a long table - leaves, bark sections, something that might have been lichen or might have been circuit material, hard to tell in the morning light. The Dreamer was working through them methodically, holding each up, placing it back. I understood she was building a visual record. She always started recording before anyone decided there was something worth recording.

Lano stopped on the path. His ears went flat, then straight up. Then he sat.

The Weather Reader came around the side of the workshop with a readout in his hand. "Point-three deviation in the atmospheric layer above the mapped boundary. Consistent bearing for eleven hours." He paused. "Also the dog is sitting again."

"He sat like this outside the caves," I said.

"At d063," the Student said from somewhere - she had arrived without announcement, notebook already open. "I have it written down."

The Builder set down her piece. "The joint is sound," she said, which was not about the joint.

We stood there in the clearing with the smell of wood and the sound of instruments and Lano sitting very still on the path, nose tipped toward the Undrawn Edge. The Philosopher would arrive soon with his wagon. The Wireman was already somewhere in the trees, doing whatever the Wireman did at the start of a thing. The Listener was calibrating something we couldn't see.

"Bienestar," Lano said quietly.

Nobody translated it. We all knew well-being when we heard it.

The Dreamer lifted her last specimen to the light, noted something, and began packing her case. The Builder rolled her drawings. I picked up my pack.

The clearing did not mark us as ready. We marked ourselves as ready by moving through it.