Dream d2078-s: Cinderwharf, Set in Thread

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the Book lay closed on the terrace stone for the first time in nine days, and none of us reached for it.

The grove had a sound I had not heard before, or had not let myself hear. Not the clatter of the Foundry, not the hiss and drum of pressure-work. It was the sound of growing: a creak in the canopy strands, the whisper of roots finding water two terraces down, the damp click of a new shoot pressing through clay. It was the opposite of the forge. The forge was impatient. The grove had no concept of urgency; it simply continued.

Lano found a patch of shade near the lowest terrace and curled there with her nose tucked under her tail. The Weather Reader sat above her on a flat stone and read the sky the way she always did, fingers loose in her lap, eyes tracing something only she could parse. "South wind holding," she said, to no one particular. "Same as yesterday. Same as it will be tomorrow."

The Builder had her back against a canopy post, eyes half-closed. "I keep expecting a task," she said. "My hands don't know what to do with themselves."

Rurik padded through the terrace rows at his own pace, reading the mound-shapes of everything planted so far. He paused at a cluster of grass-shoot markers, sat, and wrapped his tail around his feet. He did not move again for a long time. That was enough. That was the whole of his contribution, and it was exactly right.

Somewhere up in the nest-rows, one knot had slipped. A Loomkeeper came to it without fuss and rewove it with a few passes of the beak, a few draws of fresh grass-thread. No alarm. The work took as long as it took, and when it was done the row looked the same as ever.

The Book's singed spine caught the loomlight. I ran a thumb along the char. Every page still held. I had carried it through the heat and it had not asked to be thanked, the same way the grove did not ask to be admired. Things that endure rarely do.

In the evening the Loomkeepers gathered at the reading post and we opened the Book to the Cinderwharf entry - seventh on the circuit. The lead Loomkeeper ran its beak slowly along the passage and the others began to knot: one per name, a row of small tight memory forming at the canopy's edge. When it was done, one Loomkeeper carried the Cinderwharf seed-deed to the ninth terrace row and pressed it into prepared ground. The Starling Chorus wheeled once overhead and called: "The seventh is set." Then it banked south and was gone.

Lano woke briefly, ears lifting, and settled again. Rurik blinked once at the terrace. The Builder straightened her back and said nothing, which meant she approved.

The grove would grow the rest. That was what it did.