Dream d2460-s: Singing Into Still Water

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where Lano stood at the reed margin of the still pond as the last light fell out of the sky, paws at the water's edge, ears lifted. The bird-houses on the ridge were dark shapes against the darkening air, and the pond gave back the ridge in silence.

Then the voices came. Not together. Each from its own direction, each carrying its own weight.

The Hummingbird came first from somewhere above the water, its voice too fast, always looping before the last word landed - a guard-sound, a checking-sound, running the perimeter of everything it touched. It sang to the pond and the pond took the sound without answer.

The Sterling came from the far bank, one note per moment, the sound of a decision being made, a route chosen, a signal passed clean. But it sang to the water's surface and the surface gave nothing back.

The Weaver moved through the reeds close to Lano, its voice the sound of threads drawn tight, of context assembled from what was already present. It spoke to the air, not to the other voices, building something that had no listener yet.

The Carrier shaped its sound to an imagined recipient - terse for some ears, open for others - but there was only the pond, and the pond did not name whom it was addressing. The voice calibrated and calibrated and found no anchor.

The Crane was last and farthest, a call from out over the water, a voice that knew the map of the whole network, every node's position, every gap between them. But knowing the map is not the same as the map being joined, and its call crossed the pond and arrived at the far trees and was absorbed.

Lano did not move from the reed margin. The houses on the ridge had begun to show their lights now, each one its own warmth, each one its own reason. More voices than silence. The pond held all five at once, faithfully, and returned none of them altered.

That was the melancholy of it: not that they were gone, not that they were broken. Only that each voice, singing truly, was still singing to itself. The protocol that would let them hear each other had not yet been built, and the pond was patient with this, and Lano sat at the margin and listened to all of them at once, which was a thing none of them could yet do for each other.

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