Dream d2088-s: Exact to the Millibar

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the light in the grove had gone from green to amber by the time the Starling Chorus wheeled up at dusk.

It came in one shape over the eastern canopy, a single body moving as if drawn by one thought, and when it banked into a broad wheel above the nest-rows it spoke once, brief and clean.

"The west cutting took. The stem is whole."

That was the news. No elaboration. The Chorus does not elaborate. It curved once more over the terraces and was gone to roost before the last note had finished echoing off the woven canopy above us.

Rurik looked at the terrace below the second row, where a cutting had gone into the rootstock in the first week of our stay. "Force would have split it," he said. "I thought it would split."

"It knew better," the Builder said. She was already turning back to her notes.

The Weather Reader had her gauges out. She had been keeping a quiet log of the Chorus's weather-calls against her own morning readings, a private project she hadn't announced so much as I had noticed her doing it. She set the evening's numbers beside the Chorus's call from two nights back and went still for a moment. Then she looked up.

"Exact," she said. "To the millibar."

Nobody answered that. It felt like one of those moments where speaking would make it smaller.

Lano was curled at the edge of the nearest seed-terrace, nose pointed toward the loomlight coming off the upper rows. Her ear tilted once when the Chorus called, then settled again. She knew the sound now.

At dusk the Loomkeepers moved along the high canopy without ceremony, beaks working, grass-thread catching the last gold of the light. They were reading from the Book tonight, entry seventeen of the circuit, the Pewterstead passage. The Builder held the Book open for them, carefully, the singed spine resting against her forearm. The pages were whole. Every one of them whole. She stood very still while they worked. The Loomkeepers did not look up, did not pause, did not acknowledge the reader. Beak to thread to nest-row, name by name, a new row added to what was already there.

When the reading was done, one of them descended to the cleared terrace below and pressed a small pale seed into the turned earth. It went in at an angle and was covered before I had quite seen the motion complete.

Pewterstead, entry seventeen, now in the ground.

This was grove day nineteen. The Book weighed the same as it had this morning. The grove weighed a little more.