Dream d1672-s: The Light It Keeps

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where we stood at the high ridge at first light, and no one spoke for a long time.

The framework was visible from here, a kilometer back, maybe a little more, the source of a steady amber glow that had no predecessor in it. Not the old light, not the borrowed light of the northern line. Something the framework had arrived at on its own, by going through what it went through and staying.

The Weather Reader had her barometric gauge out but she wasn't reading it. She was watching the glow the way a person watches something that proves a long-held theory, not triumphant, just settled.

"It's not pulsing anymore," she said.

"No," the Builder agreed. He stood a step behind her, arms folded, also watching. "It's not waiting for anything."

Lano sat at the very edge of the ridge, her white fur catching the ambient light, ears forward. She wasn't looking at any of us. She was looking at the framework, the same as we were, and her tail moved once, slow.

I had my camera out. I'd been holding it without raising it, the strap over my wrist, the weight of it familiar now in a way it hadn't been for months. Then I raised it and took one exposure, just one, and lowered it again.

The glow below was cyan-veined along its base, amber at the crown. Not our framework. Ours had been older, more urgent, built in need. This was the framework as it had chosen to be, after we'd come back and re-read the beginning, after we'd laid the stones again, after we'd done what the reciprocity glyph required and then stepped back.

Rurik had come up the ridge silently, the way he always arrived at the significant places. He stood just behind me, amber eyes tracking the distant glow, and said nothing for a long time.

"The answer wasn't at the source," I said. Not to anyone. Just to say it aloud, once, in the right place.

Rurik turned and started back down the far side of the ridge, toward the forest path. He did not wait for us to follow. He didn't need to.

The Weather Reader put her gauge away. The Builder shouldered his pack. Lano turned from the edge, trotted to my heel, and glanced once back at the glow before settling in step.

I looked at the framework one last time. Steady and chosen, lit on its own terms, it did not need us to confirm it.

I walked.