Dream d1966-s: Leave Taken, Bench Found

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the Bellows Court received us a second time, and this time we stayed.

The Weather Reader spoke first, before we crossed the threshold. She read the air the way she always does, turning her face into the draft that rolls off the forge-stacks. Ash, she said. Dry. The pressure is holding. A settled front. No rain on the waste, no lightning to worry the conduit. She nodded as though confirming something she had already suspected, and that was enough.

We crossed the line of cracked pavers where the foundry district begins in earnest. Red light leaked from the seam of a shuttered vent. Rurik walked the edge of it, slow, deliberate, placing each paw on the iron grating and reading whatever warmth came up through it. He stopped at the fourth grate and sat down, which I have learned means: here, not further.

The bench was where we had left it, bolted into the flank of the forge-engine, which was still running, low and constant, a pulse you feel before you hear it. Slag had cooled in ridges at the base. The gauges on the near wall still showed half-pressure, the needles slightly crusted. A dead conduit ran along the ceiling in a long loose arc and ended in nothing. The book of readings sat on a ledge cut into the engine block, covered in a square of waxed cloth.

Lano padded up to the bench and sniffed its legs, thorough and methodical. Her tail moved once, settled. She circled and lay down underneath it, nose on paws.

The Builder ran a hand along the weld that fixed the bench to the engine. Sound, she said. Whoever did this knew what they were doing.

The Wireman was already looking at the dead conduit. He did not say anything, but he was counting, measuring the run with his eyes.

The Scavenger sat on the bench, tested it, looked at the ceiling, looked at the floor. His hands rested on his knees. Comfortable enough, he said, as if comfort were a threshold he had learned to calibrate and this met it.

The Listener was quiet. He looked at the pale shape resting in the cool channel beside the bench, the channel the coolant once ran through. He put a hand near it, not touching. Still reading something the rest of us had not heard yet.

I took my place against the engine casing. The heat came through where I leaned, steady and even. Oxy settled near the channel, their gills fanning slowly in the warmer air.

We did not make a speech about it. We took leave of moving. We stayed.