Dream d2724-s: The Cold That Stands

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the road made no sound under my boots, the dust having settled hours before I reached the junction, and I understood from that silence that nobody had passed here since morning. Lano was already at the place where the roads fork from Pewterlow - four of them, more than any other entry in the second book - sitting with her ears pressed flat in the wind, watching me come up the last rise.

I wrote the entry by the last of the day's light. The Ruins of Pewterlow. Keeper: none. Roads: four. The wall at my back was the oldest standing thing on the round and it was cold: not the cold of the evening but an older cold, held in the stone itself, deeper than this season. I added that too. Cold. Standing.

Rurik had come up the eastern road at some point - I had not heard him on the gravel - and was sitting high on a fallen capstone, watching the horizon where the sky had gone the color of iron. He blinked once and looked away.

Both halves, the record asked. Cold: I wrote it. Standing: I wrote it. I shut the second book on that entry and did not open it again.

Lano stood when I stood and looked once at each of the four roads in turn. She made a sound low in her chest that was almost a word - quieto - and then pressed close to my leg and waited.

We stayed until the dark came down from the wall into the ground and the roads were no longer visible as roads, only as darker lines in the dark. Then I turned and we walked back the way we had come, which was not any of the four roads out.

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