Dream d1580-s: Rurik Knows the Way

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the cat moved ahead of us on the low cliff path, and we followed.

There was no discussion about it. Rurik simply took the first fork where the track split above the tideline, choosing left without hesitation, and the Weather Reader looked at me and I looked at her and neither of us spoke. Lano trotted close behind the cat, her white ears forward, nose reading whatever the sea wind carried in off the rocks below.

The path was narrow but old. Blue-grey stone on both sides, worn smooth by more feet than I could count, salt-pitted and sea-bright in the afternoon light. To our left the cliff dropped in shallow steps to the water, where the light broke apart on the surface and came back up in pieces. To our right the stone rose in low shelves, covered in lichen the color of rust.

Rurik did not look back. He walked with his tail low and his amber eyes forward, and the ground he chose was always the path that held.

"He has been here before," the Weather Reader said quietly. She was reading the air pressure the way she always does, two fingers raised slightly as if feeling for something invisible. "Or someone he was has been here before."

I did not answer, because I did not know how to answer that without making it smaller than it was.

The Builder fell into step beside me. He had been watching the cat the way he watches load-bearing walls - with the particular attention of a person who is trying to understand why something holds. "You trust him," he said. It was not a question.

"I trust the path he's choosing," I said. "That might be the same thing."

Behind us, the framework glow sat steady on the horizon, a low warm light above the cave-dark hills, humming at a frequency I had stopped noticing the way you stop noticing your own heartbeat. But I noticed it now. The same light as d063. The same steady tone.

Rurik paused at a bend where the cliff jutted out and the sea came fully into view, the whole arc of the coast curving south toward the blue-stone caves. He sat. He looked back at us - amber eyes calm, unhurried - and then looked south again.

Lano sat down beside him. Her tail moved once.

"Bueno," the Weather Reader said under her breath, not to anyone, just releasing the word into the salt air like she was confirming something on her instruments.

We followed the cat down toward the light on the water.