Dream d2052-s: After Larkhush, Rain

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the road bent west and Larkhush was already small behind us, its silhouette lost in the drizzle before the first hour was out. We walked without hurry. The rain was not heavy enough to shelter from, just persistent enough to bead on the Weather Reader's instruments and make the book of readings damp at its corners.

"The pressure lifted the moment we left," the Weather Reader said, tilting her barometer to read it without stopping. "Larkhush holds a low. Has held it a long time."

"The weight of closed roofs," the Builder said. She was carrying a short length of beam salvaged from the ruin, turning it over in her hands as she walked, reading its grain. "The joinery in the eastern hall was hand-fitted. Someone cared. Long before the vines."

I had written in the book that morning: What was built to last, lasted. What was built for speed, is gone. The ruin is an honest record. I had not found better words since, and I left them.

Lano moved between us on the verge, nose working the wet grass. She found something there - a scent that worked through the mud and pleased her. Her tail went up, she trotted a half-circle, and she came back to pace beside me contenta, with some private reading made.

The light went early. The drizzle held. We made camp where the road widened at a fork, on the flattened verge between two field-stone walls. I unrolled the canvas while the Builder coaxed a fire with damp kindling and a patience I have always admired in her. The Weather Reader pinned her charts to the inside of the oilcloth lean-to and sat consulting them by lantern light.

"Slatewharf is walled," she said, not looking up. "Walled towns hold their own weather. Different from ruins."

"Different questions," I agreed.

Rurik settled at the lip of the fork itself, where the stones met the mud and neither branch could be told apart in the dark. He sat perfectly still, amber eyes open, watching both ways at once. He does not sleep at forks. We have learned not to ask why.

The fire caught. Lano curled against my side, and I felt the warmth of her through my damp coat. The Builder set her salvaged beam against the wall and ate without ceremony. I wrote one more line in the book: Larkhush: the ruin remembers the care. The forgetting came later, from outside.

The rain tapped the canvas. Rurik did not move. Slatewharf was still out of sight, a name, a rumor of walls. We would find out what it held when we arrived. For now the fork was enough, and the fire, and the long road behind us going quiet in the drizzle.