Dream d2200-s: The First Honest Wall

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the mortar was still wet when Rurik set the grey pellet-stone into the course, pressing it flush with his paw until the line ran true by feel alone. He did not speak. None of us did. The Settlement was not yet a word anyone said aloud - it was only this: one wall going up in the afternoon light, the Builder's hands moving without hurry, the Weather Reader watching the sky not for weather but out of habit, because watching is what she does.

The ledger-house was already finished. It had been finished first, before anything else had a name. Its doorway held a lamp and the lamp was lit even in daylight because that is what the Builder had decided: the record is always open. The Book of Readings sat on the sill inside, not yet open, waiting for the day's first honest entry.

Lano walked the perimeter of what would be the second wall, measuring by stride. She counted under her breath and when she finished counting she told the Builder the number and the Builder cut the stone to it. No argument. The number was the number. Force, for once, was listening - not because it had been convinced of anything, but because the work itself left no room for anything else.

I carried the pellet-stone in my coat pocket for the first hour. The weight of it was not comfortable and not unbearable. When Rurik needed a plumb-anchor he held out his paw without looking at me and I put the stone into it. He pressed it against the course. It fit there better than it had fit in my pocket.

The unwritten grove-days were gone. I knew this the way you know a tooth has been pulled: the space where they were was smooth and did not ache. What the Owl had spoken was already older news than the new wall.

At dusk, the Builder washed her hands in the bucket and went inside and opened the Book and wrote the day down. I watched through the doorway. She wrote quickly, without deliberating, because she had been watching what happened and it did not need interpreting. Lano stood at my shoulder. Rurik settled on a finished course and curled his tail around himself.

The Weather Reader said: tomorrow will be clear.

No one asked how she knew.

The lamp in the ledger-house doorway held its small steady light against the blue-grey of the coming night, and the new wall cast a shadow that fell exactly where the next wall would go.