Dream d2704-s: No Latch on the Green

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I came to the Zephyrden gatepost at the second hour of night and opened the second book to its page for this place.

The gate was there in the way a gate stops being useful before it stops existing. Both hinges had held, but the hedge had grown through the crossbars so completely that the latch was buried inside the leaves, and the uprights had become part of the hedge's structure. I pressed on one bar and the whole hedge shivered. I wrote: gate immovable, absorbed. I wrote: hedge in good health. I wrote: gatepost sound on its footing, cap seated, no lean.

Lano had come through the gap beside the post, the narrow one the hedge left open, and was standing in the yard beyond. She watched me from the other side of the useless gate.

There was one road out of Zephyrden and it ran back through this gate. I wrote that down. Cold place. Tended before the first book was closed. Now nobody.

Then the sound came from the lower settlement, maybe two hundred yards off. Not a loud sound at first, more a settling, a long slow exhalation of old material finding a new position. Then a creak that went on past where a creak should stop. Then a low percussion I felt through the soles of my boots.

Lano's ears went flat against her head. She came back through the gap beside the post and stood very still at my knee with her nose pointed toward the sound. Then she barked once, sharp, and looked up at me.

I could not see the lower settlement from the gatepost. But I could see over the hedge's upper edge to where the roofline of the reclamation building had been a straight dark line against the sky. It was not straight anymore. It had begun to lean, maybe five degrees, maybe more, the old pre-works infrastructure underneath it giving slowly at one corner. There had been cable conduit buried under that foundation, the old routing from the distribution era, and nothing good persists under that for long.

I wrote: lower settlement, 2nd hour night, structural event, status unverified.

The gate column I left open. I had not gone down to look.

Lano pressed close to my leg and did not move away from it.

The one road out ran through the gate that could not be moved. I would have to find another way around, and when I did, I would still be going toward the sound and not away from it.

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