Dream d1395-s: Bark and Bearing

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the footpath opened into a workshop clearing and the smell hit before the sight did - fresh-cut wood and crushed herbs and something underneath both that I had no name for.

A man stood at a long bench under the open sky, drawing a plane across a pale board. Curls fell to the ground around his feet. Behind the workshop, half-hidden by a trellis hung with drying specimens, a woman sorted pressed leaves into flat wooden trays, holding each one to the light before placing it.

Lano ran ahead of me, nose skimming the ground, and stopped three steps from the bench. Her ears went straight up.

The Weather Reader crouched beside his portable array where the clearing met the treeline - a rack of sensors no bigger than a suitcase - running a diagnostic he'd run twice already this morning. "It's still there," he said to no one in particular. "Faint. Consistent. Twelve degrees off the bearing we'd expect from orbital interference."

"Twelve degrees off which orbital?" the Builder called from behind the workshop, where she was already pacing the perimeter with a measuring rod, notating in her field book.

"All of them."

"That's not a margin. That's a message."

"That's a proposition," the Philosopher said, appearing from around the corner with his wagon, which he had somehow already loaded. "Not established as a message until we rule out natural resonance."

"I ruled out natural resonance at breakfast," the Weather Reader said.

"You ruled it out fast."

"I had good coffee."

The man at the bench hadn't stopped planing. He ran a thumb along the wood's edge, testing the flat, then looked up at me. "Your dog knows something," he said.

I looked at Lano. She was standing with her ears pricked, pointed not toward any of us but toward the far edge of the clearing where the treeline thickened and the light changed.

"Listo," she said.

The woman with the pressed specimens came around the trellis, carrying her tray, watching Lano with the careful attention she gave her specimens. "She's been like that since you came up the path," she said.

"Since before," said the Listener, who I hadn't noticed sitting on a low wall near the workshop door, headphones around his neck, eyes closed. "The frequency shifted about twenty minutes before you arrived. I thought it was thermal gradient. Now I think it wasn't."

The Builder came back around the corner, field book open, rod over one shoulder. "I've logged the clearing. We can reestablish a relay here on the return leg." She said it simply, as though return were already certain. I didn't correct her.

The Weather Reader stood and looked at the treeline where Lano was still pointing.

"The Undrawn Edge," he said.

"Working name," the Builder said.

"Only name we have."

She nodded. "Which is why it'll do."