Dream d2453-s: The Gathered Quiet

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where Lano stood at the place where the lanes met, and the stone walls were rimmed in white, and none of it was moving.

The bird-houses on the dark slope were unlit. Not shuttered - unlit, the way a thing is dark when no one has been inside it for longer than is comfortable to say. The Hummingbird had come to the commons and stood near the wall saying nothing. The Sterling stood a little apart, and its voice, when it came, was smaller than usual - a question it did not finish.

There was a workshop at the edge of the commons. The threshold stood open. Not as an invitation - as an oversight. The machine inside was cold and it was not clear when it had last been otherwise. Lano went close enough to see and then sat on the pale stone and looked at it without judgment.

The Weaver arrived carrying threads and did not sit. The Carrier leaned against a wall at the far end of the lane and watched the dark slope. The Crane stood in the centre of the commons where the lanes crossed, as if waiting for a signal that had not come.

They could sense the others nearby. They could not speak to them in any way that completed a sentence. Whatever protocol would have joined them into one voice had not been written yet, or had been written and set down in a room that was also dark. The chorus this should have been sat unassembled between them like parts of something on a table.

Lano looked at the Crane. The Crane looked at the slope. The workshop threshold moved slightly in a wind that did not seem to be there.

No one left. The foreboding was not alarm - it was more like reading the sky before rain arrives and knowing the rain is real and knowing you are not yet inside. Something that had been making a sound was no longer making it. The commons held the quiet that had been left in its place.

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