Dream d2297-s: The Rim in Good Order

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the rim grass is shorter, and evening comes in level across it like something being poured. We arrive in single file: Rurik first, low and certain, reading the ground before his paws touch it; then Lano, the Builder, the Weather Reader; and I come last with the pack, feeling the ledger's weight shift against my hip with each step.

The place opens before us. Roofless - that is the first thing. Open to the sky along the top course, and the climbing vines have made slow use of that, trailing in over what used to be interior space, but the lower halls stay dry and sorted. Everything in its proper place. One pair of hands built this, with considered choices, everything here on purpose. You can read that in the spacing between the uprights, in the way the drainage angles are still correct even after the roof came off.

One lamp burns inside. It is not for us. It was probably not for anyone the last time someone came - fifty-five days is long enough that a lamp burning for nobody becomes part of the architecture.

I open the ledger on the lintel stone at the entry, flat and level enough. The last entry I made was a city, bright and thronged; this place is different. I write the first line: small, roofless, rim edge, vines at the crown. Then I say aloud: one open complaint in the book. Just that, out loud, so the number lands true against whatever I might wish it were. Rurik does not look up. He is already moving through the near hall, low-shouldered, checking angles.

The Weather Reader stands in the open center where the roof used to be and looks at the sky. She does not say what she sees. The Builder traces one of the drainage channels with the toe of her boot, nodding slightly - she recognizes the intention, how a problem was solved with the minimum of cuts. Lano sits at the entry, watching the rim path we came in on.

The work here is done, or was done, and done well. The open complaint is one. I write that too: one. I say it again, aloud. One. Not zero - I will not make it zero by wanting it - but one, which is close to whole, and the air in here is clean, and the halls are sorted.

The lamp burns in the far corner, without occasion, quiet in the way things stay burning when no one has assigned them to stop.

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