Dream d2081-s: The Staking, Not the Bracing

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where grove day twelve passed like a lesson you absorb through the soles of your feet.

The Loomkeepers were at the upper terrace by the time we arrived, beaks threaded with dry grass pulled from their own nest-rows. We had learned by then not to ask what they were doing, to watch instead. The Builder stood at the edge of the planting bed, arms crossed, watching a single seedling being staked into the loam with great care. The stake was no thicker than a finger. No crossbrace, no anchor-pin, no welded footing. Just a thin rod of cured reed and a loose loop of grass-cord around the stem, persuading rather than binding.

She said nothing for a long moment. Then: "If the wind comes from the east tonight, that will not hold."

One of the Loomkeepers glanced at her, beak still, and went on knotting.

The Weather Reader had already read the morning: southwest, soft, dropping to nothing by dark. She said so quietly, not to convince anyone, only to complete the record. The Builder watched the seedling for another moment, then uncrossed her arms. She did not say it was enough. But she stopped asking.

I took the Book from where I had been carrying it against my ribs, the spine still rough where the fire had caught the leather, the pages whole and cool as they always are, and I opened it to the back where the margins run widest. I wrote: the grove is a ledger you can stand under. Rurik came over without asking, which is his way, and looked at what I had written. His tail moved once.

Lano padded the perimeter of the terrace all afternoon, nose low, reading whatever the Loomkeepers' work left in the air. Once she sat beside a nest-row and looked up at the woven canopy for a long moment, ears forward. Bueno, she said to nothing in particular, and trotted on.

At dusk the Chorus gathered above the central loom-post, one wheeling shape. "Ospreygreen into the ground," it called, and then settled into stillness as the light went gold. I carried the Book to the planting circle and held it open to the Ospreygreen entry, entry ten of the full circuit. The Loomkeepers read it into the canopy in the only way they know: beak to grass-strand, knot by knot, name laid into nest-row above the place where that deed once happened. When the reading was done a single seed went into the turned earth below. Not forced. Set.

The Hummingbird Wardens completed their evening circuit of the grove's edge at exactly the light they always choose. You could set a gauge by it.

I stayed at the circle until the loomlight faded, the Book closed in my lap, twelve days of growing held quiet around us in the terraces.