Dream d2234-s: Mills Still Going at Dusk

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the sound of the mills arrived before the town did - a low, wooden groan from somewhere past the hillcrest, the kind of sound that means work is happening without anyone watching it happen.

We came over the ridge in late afternoon light, the five of us strung out along the path in no particular order. Rurik was a few paces ahead, his tail low and his ears turning. The valley below held a town of perhaps thirty roofs, maybe fewer. I did not trust my eye at that distance, so I said nothing yet. The gates stood open. That was the first mark: gates open, hour unclear, mills running.

Lano walked beside me as we descended, her coat picking up the dust of the path. She said the air smelled of cut timber and something else - flour, maybe, or fresh sawdust, she could not be certain. The Weather Reader looked at the sky to the west, where a low shelf of cloud had been following us since morning. Nothing in it yet. The Builder walked quietly and looked at the rooflines.

Inside the gates the town was orderly in the way that busy places are orderly - things had been put somewhere, even if not quite the right somewhere. A plane left on a low wall. A coil of rope around a post instead of its hook. Someone had been here recently, had set something down meaning to come back, and either had or hadn't. I wrote: one open complaint, noted. I wrote: one set of hands built this.

Then I counted the buildings out loud, walking the perimeter with the ledger open on my arm. Seventeen. I walked back and counted again. Eighteen. I said eighteen and held the number up against the wish - the wish being for something that felt proportionate, that felt like what this place deserved - and I held to eighteen anyway. Eighteen is what is here. That is the number and it is written.

Rurik sat at the base of the first mill and watched the wheel turn. He looked like he was counting something too, in his own way, though he said nothing.

The grey pellet-stone from below the perch is in my pocket. I feel its weight each time I shift the ledger from arm to arm. It is not a measuring tool. It holds no number. It is simply there, and I carry it, and the mills go on turning in the last of the light.

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