Dream d1632-s: He Read With His Body

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the firelight was low and steady, and we had been sitting with the figure long enough that the cave had grown familiar around it.

The figure-with-arms-raised occupied the center of the wall, carved deeper than the others, the lines worn smooth by centuries of touch or weather or the slow press of time. The arms lifted at a gentle angle, palms open and facing outward. We had read it as giving-back. We had written that in our notes. But notes are a kind of distance.

The Dreamer stood close.

He had been there since before I woke fully into the dream, already present, the camera slung at his shoulder but not raised. His hands were at his sides. He looked at the figure the way you look at something you recognize but have not yet said aloud.

Rurik was curled near the base of the wall, amber eyes open, watching him. The black cat had not moved for some time. Lano sat beside me, nose pointed toward the Dreamer, tail still.

The Weather Reader said, quietly, "High pressure over the origin. It's been steady since we arrived." Not a question. Something to fill the air without requiring an answer.

The Builder glanced up from the circle-geometry sketch she had been running over again. She looked at the Dreamer, then back at her paper, and set the paper down.

No one spoke after that.

The framework was dimming at the edge of the sky behind us. I had seen it when we came in from the entrance, a slow fade in the eastern glow, uneven, one section graying while the nodes beside it still held light. It had been doing this for days. But in here the firelight was warm and the wall was patient.

The Dreamer lifted his right arm.

Slowly. Not performative. Deliberate, the way you set a joint when checking an angle. His left followed. The shoulders came up. The palms turned outward.

He stood there.

Arms raised. Facing the wall. Mirroring the figure, or the figure mirroring him. By that point the difference was hard to locate.

Lano made a small sound. Tranquilo. She put her chin on her paws.

Rurik still had not moved.

I did not write anything in my notebook. The Builder had set hers down. The Weather Reader watched the Dreamer with the same attention she gives to a pressure front that has not broken yet.

The figure on the wall and the man before it: both arms open, both palms out, both facing us.

The framework's dimming edge flickered once, then held.