Dream d1990-s: Paces and Long Tables

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the fog had not lifted by the time we were already an hour into the work.

The Builder had found the long tables before anyone else that morning - the central hall of Brackensquare where the town's current project spread itself across three trestle surfaces: lengths of timber in various states of joinery, coils of wire at intervals, and small diagrams pinned flat under smooth river stones to keep them from curling. She had already pulled off her outer coat and was bent over one end, asking a question of the woman beside her before the rest of us had set down our packs.

Lano found a spot beneath the nearest table and settled there, nose working, tracking each person who passed - buena, reading the room in her own fashion.

The fog outside was low and grey over the square, and from somewhere beyond the southern wall we could hear the measured thump of the testing ground, a rhythm of impact and pause, the kind of pattern that means someone counting paces and noting where things land. They had been at it since before dawn. Last night the hammers had gone long past dark, voices carrying across the square until the lamps finally went out one by one.

The Weather Reader came to stand beside me at the hall's open side door. She held her barometric gauge loosely and watched the fog move.

"Four days in and they still haven't shown us half of it," she said.

"The reading only opens the door," I said. I had been writing it each morning in the book - the fresh footprints laid over the older ones on the main street, the light in the windows going late, the sound of work that had not stopped when the previous travelers left.

Rurik appeared at the far end of the hall and walked the length of a trestle table without touching a thing, amber eyes cataloguing each tool in its place. He stopped where the Bridgekeeper stood bent over a diagram and sat, watching her.

She noticed him and laughed quietly. "Your cat thinks I've made an error."

"He usually has a point," I said.

I joined them and we went over the load path together. When she asked whether the Builder would look at a particular junction, the Builder was already behind us, having heard her name across the room.

I wrote down the Bridgekeeper's hands on the diagram. I wrote down Rurik holding his place at the corner of the table, steady as a fixed weight. I wrote down what the testing ground sounded like from here, through the fog.

Day four of five. The work was the reading, continued.