Dream d1610-s: The Dreamer Reads a Glyph

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the low wall held only one glyph, and the Dreamer had been sitting with it since before the rest of us had finished eating.

The wall was old even by the cave's standards - shorter than a man's knee, blue-grey stone worn smooth at the top edge by generations of hands or weather or both. The glyph carved into its face was the circles-within-circles: the cycle mark, the oldest notation on any surface in these caves. I had seen it a dozen times in the last fourteen days and understood it a little better each time. The Dreamer had been there since morning.

"He has not moved," the Weather Reader said to me, low, not unkindly. She was recalibrating the barometric dial by the fire-blackened hearth stones, her fingers steady, her eyes on the Dreamer's back. "Not since before I took my readings."

"He's reading it," the Builder said from behind us. He set down the notes he had been making about the stone circle's geometry and watched for a moment. "Or it's reading him. Either way, I'd leave him to it."

Rurik sat on the top edge of the low wall two arm-lengths from the Dreamer, amber eyes half-closed. The black cat had not moved either. That meant something, but I had learned not to name what.

The Dreamer's right hand was on the stone. Not resting - tracing. The outer ring of the cycle glyph, then the inner, then the innermost. His finger moved slowly enough that I could not be sure it was moving at all, except that it was always somewhere different when I looked again. His camera bag was beside him on the ground, flap closed, unregarded.

Lano nosed at my knee, then trotted toward the low wall and settled on the ground near the Dreamer's feet. She rested her chin on her front paws and watched the glyph with what I can only describe as patience. I do not know if dogs understand patience, but she had it.

A kilometer behind us, the framework's glow pulsed once - I saw it in the corner of my eye, the faint flicker against the skyline - and then held. Faint but holding.

I looked back at the Dreamer.

His hand had stopped. It rested at the center of the glyph, the innermost circle. His head had tilted - just slightly, just enough - away from the north. Not toward me. Toward the wall. Toward the stone the glyph was carved into, as if the origin itself had asked him something he was now considering.

The Weather Reader glanced at me. I looked at the Builder. We did not speak.

The Dreamer stayed where he was, hand at the center, and for the first time in weeks, he did not look like a man facing away from something. He looked like a man beginning to read.