Dream d1741-s: Blue at the Rim

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where we came to Quillbarrow at the hour when the sky forgets whether it is day or night. Blue dusk, the color of old ink. The road had been climbing for an hour through stands of overgrown hedge, and then the settlement appeared at the rim of a long slope: walls, rooflines, the geometry of a place that had known how to hold itself together, even if it no longer did.

From that distance it looked clean. Orderly. The Builder stopped walking and tilted her head the way she does when she is measuring something with her eyes rather than her hands. "The hall placement is right," she said, half to herself. "Someone thought about prevailing wind."

The lamps were just lit. Someone had lit them, which meant someone was here, or had been here recently enough to leave the habit behind. I wrote that down: lamps lit at blue dusk, fire still in the habit of it.

Rurik reached the gate first, as he always does. He sat at the threshold and did not cross it. His amber eyes moved along the lintel, down the post, across the stone sill. He was reading something I could not yet see. We waited. When he stepped through, we followed.

Lano had her nose down the whole approach, tracking something along the base of the wall. She lifted her head at the gate, ears high, then trotted through ahead of us without hesitation. If the place disturbed her, she gave no sign.

The Weather Reader uncapped one of her barometers as we entered the main square. She held it level, watched the needle. "Pressure's been stable here a long time," she said. "Either the place is sheltered or nothing has moved through it in years." She did not say which she thought it was.

The square was laid out properly: well-proportioned, a central point that would have oriented the whole settlement. The halls around it were standing, but the overgrowth had begun its patient work on the margins - vines along the lower courses, grass seaming the paving stones. The lights caught it all and made it look, for a moment, almost inhabited.

We found a room with a solid door and a hearth that drew cleanly when the Builder coaxed it to life. Rurik marked the threshold with one slow pass and settled on the sill. Quieto, Lano said with her posture, curling beside the pack.

I opened the book of readings to a fresh page. Quillbarrow, day one. First impression: everything in its proper hall, the lamps still faithful, the road in still clear. The reading proper begins tomorrow.