Dream d1842-s: Targets at the Edge

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the drizzle had not lifted in three days.

That morning I found footprints in the soft clay of Nettlesquare's main street and crouched to read them. Weeks-old at most - the edges still crisp on the inner curve, the heel not yet smoothed by further rain. Lano nosed at the nearest set, her tail low and steady, working through whatever the clay still remembered.

"Someone came in a hurry," the Builder said behind me. She had her notebook open already, water beading on the cover. "And then came back. Look - same sole, same stride, but the second pair is running."

By afternoon I had walked Nettlesquare's inner ring with her. She put her hand to each wall we passed, reading the join between stone and mortar the way some people read a face. At the long covered gallery she stopped at the foundation course and worked her fingers along a corner joint.

"This was built to hold more than it's holding," she said. "Whoever planned these footings planned for weight."

The gallery tables were all occupied. Each person had tools laid out beside them as if arranging a workspace - calibers, measuring strings, diagrams with ink run slightly in the damp. Hammers sounded from behind the granary wall, steady and unhurried, the rhythm of people with more night ahead of them than they needed.

The Weather Reader had been quiet all morning. We found her at the testing ground near the eastern wall at dusk, standing with her barometer in both hands. Targets were set out at measured intervals on wooden frames dark with old damp. The nearest had been struck recently - the gouges pale against the weathered grain.

"High pressure, still climbing," she said without looking up. "The air here has been disturbed for weeks. This place has not been still."

Rurik sat at the testing ground's gate and watched the far targets. He did not follow us inside. That was its own kind of reading.

I wrote it all in the book: the clay, the footings, the hands at the tables each with their own arrangement, the hammers going past dark. Lano curled by my boot while I wrote, ears pricked at each strike from behind the granary wall.

The settlement had been active for weeks before we arrived. That was the discovery of day three.