Dream d1813-s: Noon Work at Brackensquare

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the sun was directly overhead and the shadows had nowhere to hide. Brackensquare at noon was a different town than it was at dawn - the mist had burned off the rooftops, the stones of the main street were dry and warm underfoot, and you could see the tracks clearly: boot prints in the dried mud at the corners, wheel ruts pressed deep near the eastern gate where something heavy had been moved recently. Not months ago. Weeks. Maybe less.

The Builder had been up before me and had already found her post at the long tables where the carpenters worked. She was fitting a joint, her hands moving with that particular economy she has, no wasted motion. I watched her hold a tenon up to the light and sight along its edge before she said anything to the man beside her. When she spoke it was about load paths. He listened.

The Weather Reader stood at the edge of the testing ground - a flat rectangle of tramped earth beyond the grain store, targets set at measured distances along one wall. She was not watching the targets. She was watching how the men moved between positions, the rhythm of it, what they stopped to adjust and what they never had to think about. She had her pressure gauge out but was not using it. Just watching. I recognized the look.

Lano trotted the length of the long table and back again, nose to the sawdust, reading the floor in her own way. She stopped at something - a knot of wood shavings - and sat there with her ears up until the Builder nudged her gently aside with one boot to reach a clamp.

I was set to work on inventory. A town that busy accumulates faster than it can count, and my handwriting was legible, which was apparently the deciding qualification. The Bridgekeeper brought the ledgers and left me in the yard with them and a cup of water. Rurik came and sat on the nearest page.

"That is deliberate," I told him.

He looked past me at the gate.

We worked through the afternoon into the slant of the sun. The Builder found a beam that was seated wrong and said so quietly to the head carpenter, no drama, just the fact of it and what it would mean in ten years. He did not thank her immediately. He came back an hour later and asked her to show him exactly where. She showed him.

I wrote the day into the book of readings not as observation but as participation. There is a difference. Brackensquare let us into its labor today. That is a different kind of trust than letting us walk its streets.

One more day here, and then we read what we have earned.