Dream d2012-s: The Lamplighter's Round

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the drizzle had not stopped since morning and Umberfold looked different for it - the cobblestones darker, the lamplight catching in shallow puddles, the whole village seeming to draw its eaves lower and closer. We had slept here one night. This was the second day, and so the streets were not strange anymore but not yet known.

The Builder walked ahead with her notebook pressed flat against her chest to keep it dry. She paused at every crossing, studying how the paths met - some at right angles, some at an odd drift that spoke of two older tracks merging at different periods, one layer of planning laid over a prior one. "Umberfold grew from at least three centers," she said. "You can read it in how the crossings lean."

Lano trotted through a puddle without care, then shook one paw, then the other.

We met the Lamplighter first, moving ahead of us along the main way, pole in hand, adjusting a wick that had drifted in the wet. He nodded when we drew close. "Visitors from last night," he said. Not a question.

"Reading your village," I said. "If that sits well with you."

He considered the lamp more than our party. "It sits. Read it carefully. It spreads unevenly - the south quarter gets good pressure, the north quarter less. The lamps know."

The Weather Reader noted this in her own book. She had already marked that the air pressure in the bowl of the valley ran a half-measure lower than the road above - cold pooled and held here, and the drizzle seemed heavier than it was.

The Brook-warden we found at the channel where a small watercourse threaded under the main lane - stone arches, old mortar, one section repointed in different grit. She was checking a gauge, and she exchanged a few words about water-memory: how the brook ran higher in wet years, lower in dry ones, and that this year the channel was doing something between the two that she had not named yet.

The Schoolkeeper met us last, at the door of a low building that doubled as a store-room. He handed Lano a crust she accepted without ceremony, tail moving twice. I said "buena" under my breath, and Rurik, who had settled on the step to watch, closed his amber eyes once and opened them again.

I wrote three new entries in the book that evening. The village spread unevenly. The lamps knew. The paths crossed paths. We were learning Umberfold properly, which meant slowly.