Dream d2782-s: Blank Stone, First Tremor

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the second mark is a stone set where the road runs out. I found it at mid-morning when the mist had lifted enough to show the face of it: a blank slab, no inscription, no direction carved into it. The road comes to it and stops.

I put the sheet down on the ground and held it flat with two stones while I copied what I could see into the column. Road ends at stone face. No road continues past. The land past the face is undivided, no path worn into it, though the grass is pressed in a long curve as if feet have gone there and come back without meaning to mark a route.

Lano sat beside me while I wrote. Then her ears went flat.

She was on her feet before I understood why, facing back the way we had come, her whole body gone stiff. A warning bark, one short note, aimed at nothing visible from where I stood.

I heard it a moment later. Not loud: a low groan from the direction of the gate, the kind a beam makes when the load above it has changed. Then a sound like gravel running down a slope, prolonged, and a sharp bell-note of metal - one cable taking more than it was rigged for.

I folded the sheet and went back.

Coming down the road I could see the building before I reached the gate. The near corner of the long shed that had stood against the eastern wall for as long as anyone here held record: it had dropped. Perhaps a hand's-width, perhaps more. The whole long wall had gone out of plumb. A crack ran diagonal from the high window all the way down to the old courses at the base, where the stone was a different color and cut differently from the work above it. The old foundation - pre-settlement material, whatever had been built here before the current occupation claimed the ground - had shifted under the weight.

Three cables still ran from the near wall to a buttress post driven into the yard, makeshift, unplanned. One had parted. The post itself was leaning at an angle that meant the remaining two were doing more than they were made for.

The ropemaster stood in the yard with two others, looking up and speaking in low voices. None of them moved in haste. Nobody was inside. The gate was shut as it had been shut for four nights running.

I stood at the edge of the yard with my sheet. I wrote: second station, road ends at blank face, no continuation recorded. That column was full. The yard was not mine to rule.

Lano pressed close against my leg. Her ears did not come up.

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