Dream d2182-s: Where Stone Finds Its Course

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the first course of stone went down before the light had moved a finger's width. The Builder sets each piece by feel and level both, and no one rushes her - that is the agreement we arrived here with, and it holds without being spoken.

Rurik crouches at the corner, watching how the mortar grips. He does not offer advice. He simply watches the way a black cat watches anything: completely, and with no outcome already decided. Lano stands at the western edge of what will be the ledger-house wall, her weight on one leg, her ears turned to the wind that comes off the high ground each morning. She is reading it. The Weather Reader has already written the morning condition in the back pages of the Book - a narrow column, temperature and direction and the quality of light, two lines, nothing more. She hands the Book to me when she is done.

I write the morning too, but differently: the sound the mallet made against the stone-peg, the smell of wet clay mix, the way the Builder's hands moved without wasted motion. It takes longer than two lines. That is permitted.

The grey pellet-stone sits in my pocket where it will stay. The unwritten grove-days are gone - not lost, not mourned differently today than yesterday, but gone the way a smooth gap is gone: you can feel the place where something was, and what you feel is the absence, which is now part of the shape. I have stopped reaching for those days to fill them in. What I have is the record, and the record is enough.

By midday we have the ledger-house walls to knee height on three sides. The fourth side is open on purpose - the Builder drew it that way in the dirt before we laid the first course, a doorway that faces east so it catches the first written light of every day.

Force has been quiet all morning. Not absent - I can feel it the way you feel weather before it arrives, a pressure in the joints of the day - but listening, which is a different thing than I expected. It sits back and lets the Builder place the next stone. It does not improve the stone's position. It watches the way Rurik watches: completely.

The Hummingbird Wardens pass on their circuit at the hour they always pass, three in the low dart, one holding the corner hover, one already gone. You could measure the day by them.

I write that down too, same hour I saw it.