Dream d1896-s: Leave to Stay at the Casting Floor

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the Foundry District opened before us like a jaw.

The heat reached us before the light did. The Weather Reader stopped walking and turned her face toward the orange sky, reading something in the pressure of the air. "There is no weather here," she said, not with disappointment but with the precision of a fact. "The weather has been replaced." She meant the forge-wind, which moved in one direction only, driven by the great engine below the Casting Floor, never turning, never varying.

We crossed through the last of the outer works and into it.

Slag heaps banked against dead conduit runs. Cracked gauges on the south wall still showed readings from some era of pressure we had not been part of. The forge-light was red and undiffused, the kind of light that makes shadows sharp and skin look like copper. I could feel it on the backs of my hands. Rurik walked ahead of me, and his black coat went glossy in it, and he paused once at a section of broken grating and put his nose to the gap and listened.

The Casting Floor was vast and lower than I expected. You descended to it by three steps, and those steps were worn bright from use. The bench was bolted into the forge-engine's east wall. Not set beside it. Bolted into it, as if someone had decided that rest and work should be the same body.

In the cool gauge-channel along the far wall, Oxy moved. The pale gleam of them, slow in the cooler water, their gills catching the red light and throwing it back diffused and pink. They had found the channel without being directed. They seemed to know already where the quiet water ran.

The Builder walked the floor first, hands open at her sides, reading surfaces. She stopped at the bench and pressed both palms flat against the engine casing. "This will hold," she said.

The Listener said nothing. He stood near the descent steps with his eyes closed and his head slightly tilted, taking in the sound of the place. Then: "The rhythm is consistent. That matters."

The Wireman crouched at a conduit junction and traced a run of cable with one finger, working out the diagram of it in his head without speaking.

The Scavenger had already found a high shelf near the south gauges and set a small heap of salvaged parts on it with the careful tidiness of a person organizing a workshop.

Lano circled the floor twice, nose working. Then she chose a spot beside the bench, turned three times, and lay down.

We asked the Foundry if we could stay. The Foundry said nothing back. We took that as yes.