Dream d2125-s: Before the Spore Could Settle

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where we were deep into grove day fifty-six, and the terraces were still soft from morning rain when the planting order came down.

The Loomkeepers had chalked the sequence onto a bark-strip the Builder read aloud, walking the rows ahead of us with her measuring cord tucked under one arm and the list held flat against the wind. Seven seeds this morning, each named for a deed we had watched accrete since the first arrival. We followed her down the terraces in order: Rurik carrying the dibble-stick, the Weather Reader trailing her hand along the bamboo stakes to count them, Lano pressing close to my heel and nosing at each newly turned hollow before we filled it.

I carried the Book.

It does not leave my hands during the planting days. The singed spine fits against my forearm the way a tool fits a worn handle, and I have learned to feel the whole-page weight of it separately from the char at its edge: every word intact, the fire that came for it failing to finish the job. I counted the seven holes as we went, and when we reached the last of them the Weather Reader said the south wind had changed character since sunrise, carrying something thicker than sea-damp.

We heard the Wardens before we saw them, or rather we did not hear them at all - only noticed that the air above the new row had gone briefly wrong, a single body punching through it at a speed you feel more than watch. The snap was clean. By the time I looked up the Warden had resumed its circuit, the blight-spore already gone, the patrol unbroken at the pace the grove runs itself. They never vary. You could set a gauge by them; the Weather Reader once tried, and the error was less than a finger's width over an hour.

Lano sat back on her haunches and watched the sky. Tranquila. One word was enough.

The Builder sealed the last hole with both palms and stood without ceremony. That was the morning's work done.

In the evening the Loomkeepers moved to the canopy above the newest nest-row and began the fifty-fourth entry of the circuit: Umberbarrow. We watched from below while they worked beak and grass-thread, knot by knot, and when the reading was finished one of the grove attendants brought the Umberbarrow seed on a flat stone and a Loomkeeper carried it beak-first to the terrace and pressed it down. The canopy caught the last of the day's light and held it.

Rurik watched the row of fresh-turned earth and said nothing, which was what the moment asked. I held the Book against my arm and the grove counted fifty-six days around us, growing the ledger one deed at a time.