Dream d1650-s: The Glyph Predicted This

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where Rurik sat directly beneath the lone-node glyph, as though he had chosen the spot deliberately, his amber eyes catching the distant framework's single burning node - the one we had re-lit two nights before - and throwing it back at us in miniature.

I had been staring at the glyph for an hour. Not studying it. Staring at it the way you stare at something that will not stop being true.

The lone-node glyph is the simplest carving on the wall. A circle. A single radiating line from its upper right edge. Below that line, carved faint and secondary, eight or nine circles connected by scratched channels - the rest of the network, dark, waiting. The single node at the top is the one that feeds the others. Not the largest. The one that lets the others run.

The Weather Reader came and stood beside me without speaking, which is unusual for him. He pressed two fingers against the radiating line.

"They drew the feed-direction," he said finally. "Not power. Direction. Whoever carved this knew which node to light first."

"They knew we'd make the same mistake," the Builder said from across the chamber. She had been measuring the junction housing again, checking her splice work with her hands in the dark. "Go for the largest. Miss the one that matters."

Outside, a kilometer back on the horizon, the single re-lit node held its amber. Different color than the original, warmer, ours not theirs. But the glyph on the wall did not specify color. It specified position.

That is what had stopped me cold.

Rurik stood, stretched his full length against the cave floor, and walked twice around the base of the glyph before settling again, facing it.

I reached into my bag and found my camera before I had decided to. Old reflex, returned without ceremony. I raised it and framed the glyph against the faint horizon-glow coming through the cave mouth - the re-lit node visible at the edge of the frame, the carved node visible at center. One image held both.

"They put it here," the Weather Reader said quietly. "The ancients put it here so whoever came after would see themselves in it."

Lano padded in from the passage, circled once behind my heels, and sat. Her nose tipped upward toward the carved circles, reading something I could not.

I did not photograph the glyph alone. I waited until the Builder crossed the frame, her hand still marked with splice residue, and took it then.

We were in the carving. We had been in it before we arrived. They had put us there.

The shutter clicked. Outside, the single node held its amber without asking permission.