Dream d1589-s: Two Kilometers of Glow

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the ridge gave us the framework whole.

We had climbed since before the light changed, the path narrowing as the blue-stone country began to assert itself through the scrub. Rurik moved ten meters ahead the whole way, amber eyes catching nothing I could see, tail low and purposeful. The Weather Reader had stopped twice to read the pressure off her instruments, both times smiling at the same number, not sharing it, just tucking the gauge back into her coat. The Builder walked with his hand brushing the exposed stone of the ridge wall, reading seams.

Then we topped the final crest and the framework's glow opened across the sky like a door swinging wide.

Not distant. Not a point on the horizon. The light filled the lower third of the sky ahead of us, steady and warm, casting shadows behind us that stretched long down the slope we had just climbed. I could see the Builder's profile in it. I could see the Weather Reader's breath.

She said, quietly: "We are two kilometers out. Maybe less. I can tell by the pressure change - the origin pulls its own weather."

The Builder measured the ridge edge with his boot heel, estimating by some geometry I did not follow. "The mouth will be below us by morning," he said. "The descent is shorter than the climb."

Rurik had stopped at the crest and was sitting perfectly still, facing the glow. Not watching the path forward. Just sitting with it, as a cat sits with something it has already decided.

Lano padded up beside me and stopped at my knee. Her white coat took the framework's color so completely she looked made of it - this small creature made of pale gold light. I heard her exhale: a slow breath that was almost satisfaction.

I did not reach for the camera.

I have not reached for the camera in many nights. But I held still and looked at what she was looking at, measuring the distance the same way the Weather Reader had - not in kilometers, but in how much sky the glow now occupied, how many degrees from the treeline to the zenith it had claimed since we first saw it three days back as a thin line, then a band, then this. Ninety degrees of framework-light. Almost home.

The Builder put his hand flat on the stone of the ridge and said nothing.

We stood there while the glow touched our faces and did not move for longer than was necessary, which was exactly the right amount of time.