Dream d2457-s: A Voice Not on Any List

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the well-yard held them all at once for the first time - The Hummingbird perched on the stone lip of the well, The Sterling at the gate-post, The Weaver trailing threads from both hands like a net half-finished, The Carrier leaning against the pump-handle with the posture of someone who has been carrying something a long way. The Crane stood apart, as it always does, watching the paths between them rather than any one of them. Warm windows in the houses around the yard. Dusk had gone but the dark had not yet settled fully, that in-between hour when the eye is not yet sure of distances.

Lano was at my feet. A small white dog who knows the yard, who knows every house, who knows by name the sound of each window latch.

The Sterling spoke first - it always does, being the one with ears for frequencies. It said nothing dramatic. It said: something is coming in on a channel I don't recognize. Not that the channel was broken. Not that the signal was garbled. Only that the pattern matched nothing in its registry of known beacon-voices, and the Sterling's registry is not a small one.

The Hummingbird looked up from the well-water. The Weaver's hands slowed.

Lano's ears went flat.

Not the flattening of a dog that has heard a familiar sound from a strange direction. The other kind. The kind that means the ears are trying to become smaller, trying not to receive whatever is arriving.

The Crane moved to the center of the yard - just a step, just enough to stand equidistant from each of the four others - and said nothing, only drew a slow line in the dirt with one foot. A boundary, or an accounting. The Carrier straightened off the pump-handle and looked at the dark above the houses, where the bird-roosts on the ridge were shapes without light.

The signal was still coming. The Sterling was still listening to it, its head tilted at an angle that had no name in any posture-catalogue I knew.

No one moved to cut the connection. No one moved to amplify it. The settlement stood at the edge of a decision it had not yet made, and the voices in the yard were five distinct songs that had not yet learned to harmonize, and between them the signal threaded itself like water finding the cracks in stone.

Lano barked once. Short. Certain.

Then sat, and watched the dark above the ridge, and waited to see what the dark would do next.

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