Dream d1773-s: Frost on the First Wall

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the road finally widened and Cinderwharf appeared on the ridge above us, hard-edged against a noon sky that had no mercy in it.

The frost was still on the stone. That was the first thing - the walls had caught the morning cold and held it, even now, so that the whole upper face of the gatehouse glittered faintly. The Weather Reader stopped walking and put both hands around her barometer. "That's a dry air coming off the interior," she said. "These walls don't hold moisture. Good drainage, good facing." She was already reading and we hadn't reached the gate.

Rurik went ahead, as he does. He walked straight to the threshold arch and sat, tail curled around his paws, and looked back at us once. His amber eyes were patient in the way of cats who have already decided the place is worth entering.

The mills were turning. We could hear them before we cleared the last bend - a deep rhythmic thud that came up through the road itself, not just the air. The Builder slowed her pace and tilted her head. "Three mills, maybe four," she said. "Different wheel sizes. Listen to the intervals." I listened. She was right, though I would not have known to count. "The town plans its industry," she added, with the particular satisfaction she gets when something has been laid out with care.

Lano trotted between us, nose working at the town's edge-smell: grain dust, iron, wood-smoke, the faint sour trace of dye or tanning somewhere behind the walls. Her ears stood up at the mill-sound. Then she shook herself once, unhurried, and padded after Rurik through the gate.

The gatekeeper gave us the register. I wrote our names - or rather our roles, as we always do - and the date, and the reason for the visit. Reading party. Six days. He looked at the entry, looked at the barometer on the Weather Reader's belt, looked at Rurik sitting nearby, and asked no further questions.

Inside: clean streets, wide enough for two carts abreast, drains cut properly into the edges. The hall-markers were painted, not chalked. Someone had thought about the permanence of information here.

I opened the book of readings to the first clean page I had saved for this place. Wrote: Cinderwharf. Day one. Frost on the first wall. Mills running at noon. The drains are cut. Everything in its proper hall, from the outside.

Lano sat beside my boot while I wrote. Bienvenida, I thought at her. She wagged once.

Tomorrow, the reading begins. Tonight, we only let the place know we are here.