Dream d1832-s: Thin Rain, Many Windows

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the city showed itself slowly, the way bright things do in drizzle - first a smear of gold along the ridge-line, then lamp-posts resolving out of the grey, then the full gate with its carved osprey on the keystone and the sound of the place coming up through the wet road-stones - hammers somewhere deep in the yards, voices at a transit-hall, the hiss of a boiler releasing pressure behind the walls.

The Weather Reader stopped walking. She held her barometric gauge at arm's length and turned it until the needle settled. "Pressure's holding," she said. "For now." She looked at the city the way she looks at incoming fronts - not worried, not pleased, just measuring.

Lano walked beside me, nose working the damp air. She had been easy on the road all afternoon, but as we passed under the gate arch she went flat-eared and stiff. One short bark, then silence. I marked it in the book.

A gate-warden in a grey coat stamped our travel papers and pointed us toward the common-house on the civic square. "Fair warning," she said, not unkindly, "you'll hear some noise in there. We had word today that the fuel depot is running short. The generator crew has been in meetings since mid-afternoon."

The Builder looked up from studying the gate's hinges. "Short how?" she asked.

"Short enough that the outer halls are already on lamp-oil only. The main grid is holding, but the reserve tanks - " the warden paused and chose her words. "There are conversations happening."

Rurik slipped ahead of us into the square without waiting. He crossed the wet stone in three long strides and sat at the base of a lamp-post, watching the common-house door with his amber eyes. He marks every threshold the same way: sits, reads the light, decides if it is worth entering. He did not move for a long time.

Inside, the warmth hit hard after the road. The hearth was banked high and the room was crowded - more people than a city this organized usually puts in one room at the evening hour. Groups bent over ledgers. A salvage-master in a patched jacket argued quietly with a man twice her size. Someone had written numbers on a chalk-board and drawn lines through three of them.

We took a corner table. Lano climbed onto the bench beside me and pressed close. Her ears stayed low. I did not push them back up. She knows things before the instruments do.

I opened the book of readings to a fresh page and wrote the date, the city's name, and the single word the gate had given us so far: shortage.

The reading proper begins tomorrow. Tonight I write what I see. Rurik is still sitting by the lamp-post, watching the door we came through. He does not come inside until he is satisfied with the threshold. He has not come inside yet.