Dream d2060-s: The Glass Falls True

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where we were two hours out of the walled town, walking south on packed road with the day going long and ordinary behind us, when the Builder stopped mid-stride and looked back over her shoulder.

The southern sky was the wrong color. Not sunset - we still had hours before that - but a low red, the kind that lives near furnaces or inside them. Ember-red and wrong, spreading from the Foundry District's quarter of the horizon like something breathing hard in its sleep.

"Weather Reader," the Builder said, which was not a question.

The Weather Reader had her glass out already. She held it level, read it, and then I watched the column drop so fast she tilted the glass to check if it had cracked. It had not cracked. The pressure had simply dropped. "Heat surge," she said. "Something large gave way."

Lano had stopped before any of us spoke. She was planted in the road, facing back north, ears flat to her skull and every strand of white fur braced against a wind we could not yet feel. She did not bark yet. She let the air tell her the rest, nose working in small precise pulls. Then she barked once, short and hard, and sat.

Rurik, riding the fencepost at the road's edge, opened one eye. "She smells it."

"So do I," I said, though that was not quite right. I felt it. The weight of the Book of Readings in my pack had not changed but the weight of walking away from it had, suddenly, enormously. We do not walk away from a place in trouble. That is not what readers do. I turned.

We all turned, without another word about it. The Builder rehooked her satchel. The Weather Reader kept her glass out, watching the column as we walked, reading the disaster as it built. "Pressure release," she said, three minutes later. "Main line, or something near it. Something that was holding a great deal."

"A salvage joint?" I asked.

"Has to be," she said. "The old regulators would not drop this fast."

Ahead, the District's signature stack-smoke had gone wrong - not rising but pushing sideways in a low boil, the kind you see when something below the vent has failed completely and the heat is looking for any opening it can find. The gauges on the outer wall, six of them, reading-points for anyone coming in, had been reporting green when we left. Now three of them, even at distance, were pinned hard to red. The replacement spares for joints that old had not existed for a season. Whatever held the pressure now was improvised, and whatever had been improvised had given out.

We did not run. We walked fast, with purpose, the way you do when running will not help and arriving calm might.

Lano led us.