Dream d1653-s: The Camera, Clear

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood at the cave mouth with the camera already in my hands.

Not taken from the bag with reluctance, not held and then set down. Already up, already aimed at the horizon where the re-lit node burned amber against the dark - the one the Builder chose, the one the Wireman spliced back into the feed. A different color than the original glow. Not restored. Founded.

Rurik sat on the stone shelf at my left, watching the same horizon I was watching, his amber eyes catching the same light the framework sent across the dark kilometer between there and here.

"He's doing it," the Weather Reader said, to no one in particular.

"He's been doing it for a few minutes," the Builder said. There was no weight in his voice. Just observation. Just truth.

I heard them but I did not lower the camera.

The node on the horizon was the kind of light you have to earn the right to look at directly. Not because it burns - it doesn't, it's steady and soft from this distance - but because until you understand what it is you cannot see it properly. You see only what you want it to be, or what you fear it is. I had stood in front of framework nodes before this phase and seen neither one. I had seen a question I couldn't answer, and the camera had known the difference.

Lano padded to the cave mouth's edge and sat with her nose pointed toward the light. Rurik's tail shifted, not quite touching her.

I took three photographs. One wide, catching the cave mouth's carved edge at the frame's border. One close on the node itself, the amber burn against blue-black sky. One at the angle where the map glyph on the cave wall aligned with the re-lit node in the distance - the one the party had found, that pointed here, that had brought us back.

The Weather Reader looked over. "Any particular reason for three?"

"One for before," I said. "One for what it is. One for what comes next."

He nodded like that was a reasonable answer. It was a reasonable answer. That was the difference.

I lowered the camera and Lano glanced back at me from the cave mouth. The cave behind me. The re-lit node ahead. The shutter quiet, the frame easy, the camera in my hands the way it had always belonged - light and ready and without cost.