Dream d1440-s: Curls and Calibration

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the clearing opened before us like a room without a ceiling.

The woodworker was already at his bench when we arrived, a long plane running the length of a board, curls of pale wood falling to the ground like small surrenders. He did not look up. He did not need to. The sound of eight people and a dog on a worn path is not subtle.

Behind the workshop, a woman moved between low tables spread with specimens, each pressed flat and labeled in a hand too small to read from where I stood. She was building a record of something. I did not interrupt her.

The Weather Reader set his primary sensor unit down on a flat stump near the bench and opened a secondary case. "Signal's at four-point-two standard deviations above background noise," he said. "Faint. But stable. Not a burst. Not an echo."

"How old?" the Builder asked. She was already examining the workshop's foundation posts, the way she examines every structure we pass, her fingers tracing the joint where post meets beam.

"Don't know yet. Old enough that my pattern library has no reference frame."

"That's a diplomatic way of saying you have no idea."

"That's an accurate way of saying the data is still incomplete," he said, and he did not look up from his sensor.

The Philosopher had set the library wagon down at the clearing's edge and was consulting something in a green-bound volume. The Student stood beside him, reading over his shoulder, asking a question every thirty seconds that the Philosopher answered with another question.

Lano trotted past the woodworker's bench, nose low, and stopped near the specimen tables. His ears came up, both of them, sharp and still. He looked northwest.

"Tranquilo," he said.

The woodworker set down his plane. He picked up a small piece of the wood he'd been shaping and turned it in his hand. He looked at us then, at the sensor unit, at the compass the Builder had already unfolded.

"You're going to the Undrawn Edge," he said. It was not a question.

"We don't have a name for it yet," the Builder said.

"That's what we call it," the woman with the specimens said, without turning around. "Everyone who goes northwest calls it that eventually."

The clear air above the clearing held something, a faint resonance I could feel in the back of my teeth before I could hear it. The Weather Reader looked at his sensor, then at the sky, then at Lano's fixed ears.

"Still faint," he said. "But it knows we're listening."