Dream d1782-s: Pewterstead at Parting

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the drizzle hadn't stopped since before dawn, and Pewterstead looked smaller in the grey light, the way a place always shrinks when you are nearly done with it.

I sat at the Crofter's table one last time and wrote the final entry. The book of readings smells of woodsmoke now, and the spine is damp from three days of wet air. I recorded what we had found: the irrigation split that the Builder had traced and re-mortared; the reading the Weather Reader had taken at the ridge line, showing which direction the hard winters come from and which face of the hill should hold the new granary wall. I wrote what the settlement knew of itself and what it had not known until we read it. The ink bled slightly in the wet, which felt appropriate.

The Crofter shook my hand at the door and said very little, which is how I knew it had mattered. His daughter brought out a cloth bundle of bread and dried fruit for the road and handed it to the Weather Reader, who thanked her in the formal way, the way she uses when she means it most.

The Builder was already in the yard, running her hand along the lintel she had set. Not checking it exactly. More like a goodbye to the joint itself.

"Good mortar," she said, to no one in particular.

"Three generations," the Weather Reader said, reading the instrument in her palm. "This side of the rise stays drier than they think. They should plant east."

"I wrote it in the book," I said.

"Good."

Lano had already found the road. She stood at the edge of the yard with her nose lifted, reading whatever dogs read in rain. Her tail moved once, slow, and she looked back at me with her brown eyes. Then she looked at the road again.

Rurik was first through the gap in the hedgerow, as he always is. He paused for half a breath on the other side, ears flat against the drizzle, and then he moved and did not look back.

We followed.

I did look back, once. The Crofter's lamp was still lit in the window. The lintel the Builder had set caught no light in the grey morning, but I knew it was there. The settlement had seven more years on that joint than it had three days ago. That is the reading made useful. That is the only way the node re-lights.

The road narrowed between hedgerows and Pewterstead was gone from view, replaced by the sound of boots and Lano's soft trot and the thin cold rain. I closed the book and put it under my coat and walked.