Dream d1470-s: Something Prior

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where we came through a clearing that should have been quiet.

The terrain north of the beacon settlement had been wrapped in cable. Not our cable - this was older work, or maybe parallel work, conduit housings bolted to stone outcroppings at intervals too regular to be accidental. The Builder walked the line of them, reading the mounting hardware with her hands. The Student photographed the spacing. The Listener pressed his ear against one housing and said it hummed differently from ours.

We were moving through this when the Weather Reader stopped.

Not a gradual stop. She stopped as if a hand had come down on her shoulder.

The relay tower at the clearing's edge was a simple thing: steel struts, a junction box halfway up, our antenna cluster at the top showing amber where it should have shown green. Sitting on the junction box, watching us with absolute stillness, was a black cat.

Small. Neat. Amber eyes that caught the flat light and held it.

The Builder said, "Stowaway."

"That's not a stray," the Weather Reader said. Her voice was different. Careful.

Lano had stopped too. His nose worked the air. He did not bark.

"I know this cat," the Weather Reader said.

The Philosopher turned. "From the settlements?"

"No." A pause. "I don't know from where."

The cat watched her with the specific patience of an animal that has been somewhere before and knows it. Not waiting. Just present.

The Dreamer had the camera in his hands when we came through the clearing. He was not raising it. I watched him look at the tower, look at the cat, then look at something past both of them, north. The camera stayed at his side.

"We should check the junction box," the Builder said, already moving.

The Weather Reader did not move. Her barometric instruments were still. She was looking at the cat with an expression I had not seen on her before - not puzzlement, not wonder. Something closer to unfinished recognition, the moment before a name arrives.

Lano sat down beside her. Callado.

By the time the Builder had the junction box open and the Student had begun documenting the degraded relay, the cat was gone. No movement I had seen. Just gone.

The Weather Reader rejoined us. She held her instruments to the connection points. She did her work. But when the Philosopher asked her something about the relay degradation, she answered half a beat late, her eyes still somewhere north of where we were standing.