Dream d2023-s: Ink Drying at Noon

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the noon came hard and clean over Quillmoss, no cloud to soften it, the stone walls catching light like they were surprised to receive it. We had packed before sunrise. The book of readings lay open on the communal table, its last page still damp at the edge where I had written through the night.

The Caretaker found me there when the light finally arrived. She was the one who had stayed when the others left, who knew every crack in the foundation and every spot where the roof let in weather. She looked at what I had written and did not ask to read it - only placed one hand flat on the margin, briefly, as though taking the temperature of the page.

"You found the old cistern," she said.

"The Builder found it," I told her. "She says the seal is sound for another generation."

The Builder was already in the courtyard, testing the gate hinges with both palms, pressing into the pivot. "Still," she called, without turning. She meant solid. She said it the way she said everything, like the word had load to carry.

Lano sat in a patch of noon light near the gate post, watching the Builder work. Her ears were up. Her nose tracked something in the air - not alarm, just attention, the way she held a place in her body after days of reading it. Adiós, I thought, watching her. She did not know we were leaving until Rurik moved.

He stood from the shadow of the arch, stretched once from nose to tail-tip, and walked through the open gate without looking back. That was how it always went. He felt the road before the rest of us had folded our instruments.

The Weather Reader came out last from inside, her notebooks pressed to her chest, the barometric glass still swinging slightly in its case. "Pressure dropping," she said. "Not today. Somewhere ahead."

We said our farewells in the courtyard. The Caretaker gripped my arm once, said nothing more. I closed the book of readings. The spine made a sound like a room being shut.

The stones of Quillmoss were brighter than the day we arrived. That was not the noon. That was what a true reading does: it returns the light that was already there.

Rurik waited at the bend where the road turned into trees. I went through the gate second. Lano trotted at my heel. The ruin stood in its noon light behind us, and I did not look back until the road required it.