Dream d1573-s: Lano Finds the Wire First

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where Lano put his nose to the buried cabling and led us home.

We had decided to turn back. It was settled on the overlook the night before, in fewer words than such a thing usually takes - the source could not be fixed by walking into it, and so we would not walk into it, and so we would go south. There is a kind of relief and a kind of grief braided together in turning around, and nobody said much as we shouldered our packs at first light and pointed ourselves down the descent trail.

Lano went first. He did not wait to be told. He trotted out onto the descent trail with his nose low and working, and where the engineered ground was treacherous - where the buried cabling ran close under the surface and the soil above it was loose and ready to slide - he found the safe line through it. He would stop at a place that looked solid, sniff once, and go around it. He would cross at a place that looked loose and prove it firm. The conduits ran everywhere under that returning slope, knuckling up out of the ground and ducking back, and the white dog read them the way the Listener reads frequencies, threading us between them.

"Follow the dog," the Builder said, and there was something settled in her voice. "He's got the line."

We followed the dog south. The wired country opened downhill in front of us, the cold glow falling away behind, getting smaller at our backs without any of us turning to watch it shrink. The Dreamer walked with his camera lowered, and for the first time in days the lowering of it did not feel like a held question. It felt like an answer he had already given.

Lano paused at a clean stretch of trail, looked back at us to be sure we were coming, and went on down. South. Home. The homeward turn had begun, and the dog knew the way.