Dream d2582-s: The Edging Holds Still

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I came to the Ruins of Emberthwaite at last light and found the garden beds still edged, the work neat along the stone paths even under a full season of new growth pushing through. I knelt at the nearest bed and ran my fingers along the cut line in the earth, precise and deliberate, the last work anyone had done here. Lano pressed against my knee and then raised her head, ears going flat against her skull, and held very still.

I heard the Steward's Runner before I saw her, boots on gravel between the broken walls. She carried a ledger under her arm and did not slow when she reached me, only said: the gauge at the main house read a quarter drum at morning and has not been replenished since the last supply run. The salvage sheds are cleared to the walls.

I stood and wrote what she told me in the margin of my count-sheet. Emberthwaite, fuel low, stores depleted, date and hour. Not an explanation. A record.

Lano barked once, sharp and short, directed toward the dark beyond the garden wall. Then she was still again, watching.

Rurik had slipped in from somewhere and taken the gap where a gate had been, amber eyes open and unblinking, facing the direction Lano faced. I looked too but there was nothing visible there, only the cold country lying flat and dark toward the next ruins on my list.

The Runner said: the Settlement Director has called for a ranging party. They will need a route. They are asking whether the network carries anything current about what lies between here and the depot settlements to the west.

I told her what I knew, which was the seven places already counted and settled, and nothing of what lay further. That was why I was walking. I had not reached further yet.

She wrote something in her own ledger. I did not ask what.

The garden beds held their edging in the dark. I traced the cut line one more time with my boot heel and entered the space under its last notation: maintained to departure, no damage, no neglect. The column for what is neither running nor gone fit this place precisely, fit the edging still straight, fit the cut that held through a season no one tended.

Lano stayed close as I finished the entry, her nose working at something in the cold air, her tail low and still. I did not know what she scented. The Runner was already gone back toward the road.

I wrote the settlement's name at the top of its page and left the resolution column empty. That belonged to whoever reached the depot first, or did not.

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