Dream d2199-s: A Day Read Aloud

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the party had been placing courses since the light was low and flat against the eastern ridge, and by afternoon there was a wall - not a windbreak, not a temporary lean - a wall with mortar in the joints and plumb checked twice by the Builder, who would set down her level and look at me until I understood that checking once was not the same thing.

Rurik moved the grey pellet-stone from hand to hand as he worked, not fidgeting, just keeping track of it. He had carried it since the perch without complaint. I watched him set it on a ledge of new wall while he hauled a course stone into position, and then pick it up again after. He did not explain this. I did not ask.

Lano found the footing for the ledger-house that morning - a level shelf in the ground that saved us three courses on the south face. She said only "here" and marked it with a boot heel, and the Builder nodded once and that was the decision made. The doorway faced west so the last light would come in during the evening hour. This was not accidental.

The Weather Reader had been watching the sky since midday. Before the fire she said the overnight would be dry, and cool, and we should use it.

After we ate, the Builder opened the Book of Readings - not to add anything yet, but to read what was there. She read slowly, aloud, in the order the days were kept. Some entries were long. Some were a single line. The smooth gaps where days had been unwritten were not glossed over; she read to the edge of each one and stopped, and we all felt the brief stop, and then she moved to the next written thing. Nothing was said about the gaps. The record was what it was.

When she finished, she passed the book to Lano, who added the day we had just lived: the footing, the courses, the mortar mixed twice because the first batch ran thin, the wall standing plumb. She wrote it while the fire was still good and handed the book back.

The ledger-house doorway holds a square of low orange light, and Rurik is sitting in it with the pellet-stone in his open palm, looking at nothing in particular, and the wall we built today runs away into the dark on both sides of him, and it is solid.