Dream d2101-s: Quillmoss, Entry Thirty

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where it was grove day thirty-two and the south wind came wrong.

I noticed it first as a shimmer at the terrace edge, a floating thing, nearly nothing, riding the warm current up from the lower beds. The Weather Reader had her nose up already, reading the air with the slow attention she gives the sky each morning, and she said quietly: blight-spore, south quarter, low.

She did not have to say more. The Hummingbird Wardens were already there.

Three of them, then five, their circuits curving off the nest-row line to converge on the shimmer. I have watched them long enough now to stop being surprised by the precision, but it still held me for a moment - the way they found the exact intercept without slowing, without conferring, one dart-hover-snap and the spore was gone, and they were already back on circuit before the air closed behind them. The Builder watched them return to their routes and said: same gap in the second terrace pass. They'll catch the second one before we do.

She was right. They always are.

The planting itself ran in the afternoon, the terraces worked in order by deed-season, oldest names farthest from the gate. Rurik carried the seed-pouch between his teeth because that is how he carries things he considers important - no fuss, just held. Lano trotted the row-edge ahead of us, nose reading the turned soil, ears pivoting. She found a soft spot in the third terrace that would have drained wrong, and sat on it until the Builder came to look. Three seeds went into better positions because of that.

The Book of Readings rode in the wrapped cloth at my back. I feel the weight of it differently now than I did on the road out of the Foundry - less like emergency, more like responsibility. The spine is still singed. I have stopped minding that. The pages are whole.

Evening came gold and the Loomkeepers began their reading.

Entry thirty: Quillmoss. The Starling Chorus had settled into one quiet shape above the canopy and was still - it only goes still for the readings, as if the whole grove holds its breath. Beak and grass-thread, beak and grass-thread, the Loomkeepers knotting the name into the nest-row while the entry ran its length. A knot per syllable, near as I could follow. The light coming through the woven canopy turned the colour of old amber.

Then the seed went into the ground. The Weather Reader read the soil temperature. The Builder pressed the turning flat with her open palm.

Rurik sat beside me and we watched the row close over it, and that was enough.