Dream d2053-s: Slatewharf at Noon

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the road widened at the last bend and Slatewharf came into view all at once, the way a well-built thing announces itself: walls of pale dressed stone, gates standing open in the hard midday light, and above the roofline three mill-arms turning in a wind I hadn't felt on the road.

"Clean," the Builder said, and she didn't mean it as a compliment exactly - more as a first observation, the kind you write down before you know what it means.

The Weather Reader had her barometric glass out before we reached the shadow of the gatehouse. She tilted it, read it, tilted it again. "Settled," she said. "Not just today. This place has had steady pressure for a long time. You can feel it in how they've built toward the west."

Rurik walked three paces ahead of us through the gate. He stopped on the far side of the threshold, sat, and looked back at each of us as we crossed. He does this at every gate - I have stopped asking why. When we were all through, he rose and continued into the town as if something had been noted and filed.

The main lane ran straight from the gate to a covered market hall, everything in its proper quarter. The mills were north of the wall, audible but not intrusive. The light at noon was hard and honest - no shadows to hide in, no glare to squint through. Slatewharf in daylight looked like a place that had nothing to prove.

Lano trotted at my heel, nose low, cataloguing the cobblestones. Her tail moved steadily. Whatever she read in the street-smell, it didn't alarm her.

We found an inn at the market's edge - a long building with a slate roof and a stable yard that smelled of clean hay. The innkeeper took our names without ceremony and showed us two rooms with south-facing windows. I could hear the mills from the bed.

I opened the book of readings to a fresh page and wrote: Slatewharf. Day one. Gates open, mills running, pressure settled. Reads as a place that knows what it is. The reading proper begins tomorrow.

Rurik jumped to the sill and looked out over the rooftops. The mill-arms turned. Lano curled at the foot of the bed.

"Six days," the Builder said from the doorway, already studying the ceiling joists.

"Six days," I agreed.