Dream d1666-s: The Dreamer Agrees to Go

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the cave mouth held the first light in two colors: amber at the stone rim, cyan deeper in where the rock still kept its cold, and the framework a kilometer south hummed at a frequency I had stopped working against.

Rurik sat at the edge of the path, not looking back.

The Dreamer stood beside me facing outward, toward the tree line. I noticed it the way you notice a stopped clock that has finally resumed: he was facing the forest, the camera strap loose over one shoulder, his hands at his sides. Not gripped. Not braced against anything. The Builder was pressing the last circle stone into position with the heel of his hand. The Weather Reader stood at the cave mouth with her instruments out, needle steady at high pressure.

Lano moved to the edge of the cave mouth and stopped. Her ears went flat. Her head came up, tilted toward the settlement's direction, catching something the rest of us hadn't heard yet. A short bark, once, aimed at nothing visible.

"Something's off at the settlement," the Weather Reader said. She was watching her barometric gauge, not Lano. "Load dropped. The signature is a generator shedding draw."

The Builder stood. "Fuel," he said. One word, said the way you say a word you have been expecting.

I looked at the map-glyph at the base of the cave wall - the one with the radiating routes from a central mark, each line carved deeper the farther it ran from center. Distance had a cost in that glyph, cut into the stone before any of us were born. The lines that ran longest were the most worn. Whoever had made them knew what ranging for supplies meant before the word existed.

Rurik's tail moved once. He looked at the tree line.

None of us had more than the signal and the glyph and Lano's posture to work from. Salvage depleted, fuel running low, the network holding steady but untested for a supply run of that distance. The framework glowed its two-tone light behind us - chosen, not restored - and it would need tending too.

The Dreamer had not moved. He was still facing the forest.

That was enough, for now. That was the right direction.