Dream d1708-s: West Wind, New Threshold

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the road bent and Nettlehollow appeared between two low hills, its hearth-smoke running sideways in the west wind.

We had walked long enough that the road had become the world, its ruts and verge-grass as familiar as any room. Then Rurik stopped at the crest of the rise, sat down, and looked ahead with his amber eyes narrowed to slits. That is how I knew we had arrived somewhere worth reading.

The hamlet was small - a dozen structures at most, set close together the way settlements get when winters are long and shared warmth is practical. The gate was an honest one: two posts, a crossbar, a lamp that had been lit before the clouds went purple. Someone had kept that lamp in mind. I noted it.

"Pressure dropped two points in the last hour," the Weather Reader said, not to anyone in particular. She was watching the clouds race overhead, one hand resting on the barometric case at her hip. "The wind carries something from the northwest. Probably a front behind this one."

"Good building weather," the Builder said. "You can hear what's stressed when the wind loads a structure. Joints talk."

She was already reading the rooflines from the road. I watched her eyes move across each building in turn - the angle of the thatch, the set of a lintel, the way a chimney had been repointed with a slightly different mortar. She would have notes of her own by morning.

Lano had pushed ahead as we came down the slope. She trotted to the gate-post, nose low, circled it twice, then sat and looked back at us as if we were slow. Her tail moved once.

Rurik followed at his own pace. At the threshold between the gate-posts he stopped, pressed one paw to the ground just inside the line, and held it there a moment. Then he walked on through. His marking done.

I opened the book of readings and wrote: Nettlehollow. Lamp lit before dusk. Gate tended. Party enters from the road under a racing sky.

The inn - if it was an inn, or only a house with the habit of taking travelers - had candles in two windows. The woman who opened the door had flour on her sleeve and did not seem surprised to see us. She looked at Rurik, then at Lano, then at our road-bags, and made a sound of practical calculation.

"Room for the party," I said.

"Dog and cat both?" she asked.

"Both," the Builder confirmed. "The cat is careful."

She stood aside. We brought our weariness in out of the wind. Tomorrow the reading would begin.