Dream d2008-s: Banners in the West Wind

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the road dropped off a low ridge and we saw Umberhush for the first time in the grey afternoon, its rooflines sharp against a sky full of moving cloud.

From that distance it read well. That was the first surprise. The Weather Reader stopped and uncapped her barometer without being asked, and I watched her face while she read the dial. "Pressure's falling," she said, "but it's been falling all day. That's the wind, not the place." She tilted her chin toward the west and I felt it too, a steady pull out of the hill country, warm for the season. The banners on the near gatehouse, two of them, old cloth, stirred and flattened and stirred again.

Rurik walked ahead. He does that when we approach a new threshold, puts himself at the point where road becomes settlement, and we all slow to let him have his moment there. He sat at the gate arch and looked in, tail curled around his paws, amber eyes moving across the courtyard at a pace I have learned to trust. He would not have sat if something had been wrong.

Lano reached him first, trotting ahead of the Builder and me, her nose working at the air. She found a stone near the gatepost, a smooth one, and carried it in her mouth the way she sometimes does - not purposefully, just occupied. She set it down beside Rurik and leaned against his flank and he suffered it with the tolerance of a cat who has made peace with dogs.

The courtyard inside was overgrown but not chaotic. That was the second thing I noticed. The paving stones were loose in places, grass in the joints, but the original plan was still legible - hall to the north, stores along the east wall, an open well with its cover still in place. The Builder walked the perimeter before she said anything, running a knuckle along the mortar between two courses of the storehouse wall. "Set right, once," she said. Not praise, not yet. Observation only.

We took a room in the near hall, the one whose roof was still sound. The hearth was cold but the flue drew - I could feel the pull when I held my hand above the grate. I opened the book of readings and wrote the first entry: Umberhush. West wind. Banners intact. Courtyard laid with care. Threshold held. Rurik sat.

Outside, the clouds went on racing. Whatever this place had been, it had been built by someone who understood load and longevity. Whether that knowledge still lived here was tomorrow's question.