Dream d2132-s: Follow the line,

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where The gardens open and something is wrong with them in a way I cannot name at first.

The paths are there. I can see three of them branching from the threshold arch where the stone gives way to trimmed grass. But as I watch, the left one closes - not by a gate, not by anything mechanical - the hedge simply inhales and the gap narrows to a point and seals. Where it was, a line of growth presses forward, tight as a scar. A path that was there at dusk, gone.

Lano stops beside me, her shoulder against mine. She says nothing. Rurik circles once behind us, low to the ground, then holds.

The Builder pulls the Book of Readings from the carry-fold at her hip and opens it without being asked. The Weather Reader reads over her shoulder. I watch them both study entries about themselves, written in hands I recognize as theirs, describing feelings that should belong to them. Their faces give me nothing back. The words are present. The memory behind them is not.

We had days somewhere before this. We must have. The Book says so, in three separate entries, each dated. I hold the page open to the entry with my name and read it twice and feel nothing stir behind my sternum. The grove-days will not surface. The names remain - Lano, Rurik, the Builder, the Weather Reader, and the one the Book calls Protagonist, which is me. The hands that held things. The record of having held them. That is all.

The wardens arrive without announcement.

A flight of them - five, seven, more - crossing the threshold at a height just above the hedges, their wings cutting a line so exact it might have been ruled. They do not look at us. They do not slow. They take their circuit and they hold it, the dart and the hover and the turn, always the same arc, always at the same height, and the line they make through the air is the only straight thing in a garden that will not hold still.

The Builder closes the Book. "Follow the line," she says, which is not an instruction she needed to give - we are already watching the flight, already reading the angle.

The path directly under the wardens' arc is still open. I do not know if it will be open in the next breath.

Rurik moves first, tight to the center. Lano follows, then the Weather Reader, then the Builder with the Book pressed to her chest. I step through last and the hedge behind us tightens at the edge of my peripheral vision, sealing a moment that is already gone.

The wardens hold their line ahead. The paths continue to rearrange.

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