Dream d1787-s: The Masts Cry First

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where we came down the road to Marrowwharf just as the light was turning grey and the sky ahead was the color of old pewter pressed flat. The town stood on a low rise above the river - proper walls, proper layout, the mills on the water already turning though the hour was early and the workers not yet out. From the road it read as a clean place: everything in its hall, the market square visible through the open arch of the main passage, the lamp-posts still burning against the fading dark.

The Weather Reader pulled up short on the road behind me. Her instrument was already in her hand, the dial swinging before she had steadied her arm.

"Two hours, maybe less," she said, not alarmed, just reading. "Pressure dropped hard overnight. Whatever is moving in from the west, it has speed."

Rurik sat at the road's edge and looked west. His ears were high and still. He turned his head slowly, reading something the instrument did not reach.

We went through the arch.

Inside the walls the town was well-ordered: a mill authority hall with fresh mortar at the joints, cable trenches running between the rows of buildings in tidy covered channels, and above the rooflines a cluster of antenna masts on the north hill - tall, braced with guy-wires, the tallest carrying a signal-lamp line still lit. Behind the mill hall came the low hum of a generator, steady for now. The Builder looked at the masts without breaking stride. I saw her count the braces.

"Upper rigging is new work," she said. "The footings are older. I want to see the specs before that wind arrives."

Lano had been trotting at my heel since the arch. She stopped in the middle of the square. Her ears went flat against her skull. A low sound came from her - cautionary, insistent - and she looked north toward the masts. Then the first gust moved through the square and the signal lamps swung hard on their line. One cable trench cover lifted and dropped back with a clatter. The first drops of rain arrived sideways, cold and purposeful.

The townspeople began moving with a different kind of purpose.

We found the guesthouse on the square's eastern edge and the keeper took our road-names without ceremony, the way people do when they have other things pressing. I set my book on the table. I did not open it.

Rurik crossed the threshold of our room in one deliberate motion and sat beside the door.

The reading would wait until morning. The storm would not.