Dream d2215-s: Heavier Before the Count

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where dawn comes in from the east side of the settlement before the building catches it. I feel the light on the back of my neck first - cold still, the way early light is cold before the sun has weight.

The ledger-house is small. Stone-built, as everything here is stone-built, but that is not what I think of when I step inside. What I think of is the silence. Rurik is already at the threshold before me, his dark coat against the pale doorframe, and he does not move when I pass him - just watches the road that leads out.

The Owl is on the high shelf above the door. It has been there all night. I do not know how I know this.

Lano stands beside the table. She has not touched anything on it. The Builder is at the window. The Weather Reader is looking at the sky through the same window, past the Builder's shoulder, and her expression is the kind that does not yet have a name for what it sees.

The Owl says: Begin the count or it does not exist.

That is all.

Lano lifts the ledger from the table and holds it out to me. It is blank - every page of it. I knew this and it still surprises me, the way a held breath surprises you when you finally let it out. The cover is heavy. The pages inside are heavier. I have carried full ledgers before, ledgers dense with column after column of measured things, and they were lighter than this. The emptiness has mass. I tuck it under my arm and it presses against my ribs like a stone.

Rurik steps off the threshold and into the road. He does not look back. He knows we are following.

Outside, the light has shifted already. The Weather Reader pauses at the door and tilts her head toward the east, where the color has gone too yellow too fast. She says nothing about it, but I catch her glance at the Builder, and the Builder gives a small nod. Something is moving toward us from somewhere. We have perhaps half a day.

The survey road runs straight out of the settlement and then bends south into the valley. The first place on the route is far enough that we will walk an hour before we see its roofline. I can hear the ledger's blank pages shift against each other as I walk - a dry sound, a waiting sound.

The grey pellet-stone is in my pocket. The Book of Readings is in my pack.

Rurik is already ahead of us, black against the road, his tail low, his pace steady.

The sky to the east is the wrong color.

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