Dream d1394-s: Sawdust and Static

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the path led us through tall pines to a clearing where a man was shaping wood at a low bench, shavings falling like pale snow around his boots. He did not look up when Lano and I came through the tree line. The chisel kept moving.

The clearing was wider than I expected. Behind the workshop - a lean-to structure, open on the south side, tools hung in order on the wall - a woman moved among rows of pressed specimens pinned to flat boards. Each one labeled in a small, careful hand. She looked up when she heard us, nodded once, and went back to her cataloguing.

The Weather Reader was already there, standing at the edge of the clearing with his instruments on a folding table. He had the look he gets when a reading is behaving incorrectly.

"Still faint?" I asked.

"Faint is not the right word." He did not take his eyes off the gauge. "Persistent is the word. It does not fluctuate. It does not respond to barometric shifts. It has been here since before I set up the table."

The Builder arrived from the north side of the clearing, notebook already open. She had walked the perimeter. I could tell because she had that measuring look - the one where she is calculating load-bearing without being asked.

"Post footings are deep enough," she said, nodding toward the lean-to. "Whoever built this knew about frost heave."

The man at the bench did not acknowledge this, but his shoulders shifted slightly in a way that might have been acknowledgment.

Lano sat at the edge of the workspace, ears straight up. She had held that posture since we left the settlement - listening to something just beyond instrument range. Her nose was pointed northwest. Not at the workshop. Past it.

"Vamos," she said, quietly.

The Philosopher had stationed himself at the specimen boards and was reading labels over the woman's shoulder. She had not told him to stop, which meant she was either tolerant or interested.

"This classification is not Linnaean," he announced. "These specimens are grouped by response to light, not by family."

"That is correct," the woman said.

"That is a better system."

She considered him for a moment. "Yes."

The Weather Reader carried his gauge to the northwest edge of the clearing, where Lano was pointed. He held it up and went still. Then he turned back to me. The gauge was reading something. Not weather.

The man at the bench set down his chisel. He looked at the instrument, then at Lano, then at the gap in the trees where the mapped territory ended.

"The Undrawn Edge," the Builder said, behind me. Not a question.

The shavings settled around the bench. The specimen boards stood in their rows. The gauge held steady on whatever frequency it had found.

We were already in it. The gathering had started.