Dream d1901-s: What the Roads Between Carry

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the forge-light was behind us and the road ahead was pale grey dust packed hard by years of heavy transport.

We walked the Foundry District roads between one reach and the next, the party spread loose across the width of the lane the way seasoned travellers do - close enough to call out, far enough to think. The Builder walked with her eyes on the ironwork overhead, the suspended rails and dead cable runs that traced the old industrial routes. She named things quietly as we passed them. A cracked gauge cluster. A transfer valve seized open. A junction box whose lid had been pried and never replaced, its interior long since gutted.

The Weather Reader stopped and turned her face into the wind that came off the cooling towers to the west. She said the pressure was falling, that we would feel it in two hours maybe three, that the cloud cover building at the edge of the district was not a lie.

Oxy moved in the shallow drainage channel that ran beside the road, keeping pace with us through the grey water without effort, occasionally surfacing to breathe and then going back under. They had found their own rhythm in this place. The Listener watched the channel the way he watched everything, with patience that looked like stillness until you noticed how much he was taking in.

Rurik walked at the Scavenger's heel with the easy familiarity of a creature who has chosen someone. The raccoon moved without hurry, reading the road the way he read everything - for what it once was, for what had been taken, for what remained.

Lano trotted ahead of me, nose low to the dust, tracking something old and interesting. Her tail moved. She circled a section of the road where slag had been spread as fill and pressed flat, then rejoined my side and pressed briefly against my leg as we walked. One small warm point of contact and then she was ahead again.

The Wireman said the distance to the next reach was shorter than it looked. That the roads in the District were laid for machinery, not eyes, and tended to arrive before you thought they should.

The Builder said that was either reassuring or disorienting and she had not decided which.

I carried what we had learned at the Casting Floor. The weight of it was not heavy. It sat in the same place understanding sits, which is behind the ribs and a little left of centre. The road was pale. The pressure was falling. The party moved.