Dream d1634-s: The Vein Holds

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the Builder's face changed in the middle of a sentence.

He had been walking through the stone circle's measurements, tracing how the hearth stones still matched the original layout despite decades of reuse, when something in his posture shifted. He checked a small device at his belt, frowned at it, and said nothing for a long moment.

"Fuel low," he said. "The settlement's generator. They've been running the backup on stored supply and it's nearly gone. Salvage depot is empty."

The Weather Reader looked up from the barometric column. "Since when?"

"Three days. They didn't flag it while we were in transit."

Lano lifted her head from the hearth stones. Her ears went flat against her skull. She was on her feet before any of us spoke again, circling tight, then she let out a single sharp bark that rang off the blue cave walls and faded into the deeper passages.

Rurik did not move from his place beside the far wall, but his amber eyes sharpened.

The Builder's voice stayed measured. These were facts to be managed, not catastrophe yet. They would need to send a team further out. The network's feed-lines should route a supply run if the signal held from this end. But none of us said aloud how uncertain that felt.

I turned the first-gift stone in my hands. The blue cave stone had worn smooth along one edge where her mouth had held it. Lano had carried it to me on the morning this all began, before any of the rest had taken shape. I turned it over once and then stopped.

The cyan vein was lit.

A thin line of blue-green running the full length of the stone's longest axis, steady and quiet, cool against my palm. The cave had dimmed around us, the distant news of the generator pressing into even this sheltered place, and yet this small thing was holding.

"Do you see that?" the Weather Reader said quietly.

I nodded. Neither of us reached to take it from me.

The Builder looked at us, then at the stone, and whatever calculation had been running behind his eyes slowed for a moment. The calamity was real. The uncertainty was real. So was this cool line of light in my palm, faint and patient.

Lano sat pressed against my ankle, still and alert, watching the dark passage at the back of the cave. The supply crisis would require an answer by morning. The vein gave no answer. Only light.