Dream d2086-s: Reading for Pewtermoss

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where it was grove day seventeen and the coin-light moved through the canopy in slow turns, a few bright patches at a time, never the whole weave lit at once.

The Loomkeepers had already gathered at the eastern edge by the time we settled on the terrace steps. The rescued Book of Readings lay open on the flat stone in the center: singed at the spine, whole in every page, exactly as it had been since I carried it out of the Foundry with both hands and the smell of iron heat still on my sleeves. I watched it sometimes just to confirm it was still there. The habit had not worn off.

Tonight was entry fifteen. The Weather Reader counted it from memory, her voice low enough that only Rurik and I heard it. "Pewtermoss," she said, the name landing with the particular weight of a word that has been lived rather than read.

Rurik glanced up at me from his seat on the lower step, one ear tilted. He said nothing, but the look carried its own commentary on the strangeness of a grove that remembered everything by growing it.

Lano sat close to the Builder's knee, ears up, nose making small adjustments to the evening air. The Builder rested a hand on the stone near the Book, not touching it, just near. She had that habit: proximity instead of pressure.

The Loomkeepers worked in silence. Beaks threaded grass-strand through the canopy lengths in movements faster than I could follow singly, but visible as pattern: a new row forming above the last, tightening row by row as the reading moved through the entry. I did not know Pewtermoss. The Book knew. The canopy would carry it by morning.

When the entry closed, one Loomkeeper carried the seed to the nearest open terrace and pressed it in with one clean motion. No pause, no ceremony. The grove accommodates without comment.

Above, the Hummingbird Wardens flew their evening arc, so exact you could measure the light by when they crossed the far edge of the canopy. They did not vary. They did not acknowledge us. They simply flew the circuit the circuit required, and the canopy steadied in the line where they passed.

The Starling Chorus turned once overhead, one dark shape banking against the last pale strip of sky. "Fourteen planted before tonight," it called. Then it was gone west.

The Builder looked across at the Weather Reader.

"Still growing," the Weather Reader said.

The coin-light moved. That was the whole of it, and it was enough.