Dream d2812-s: The Crossing Kept Its Word

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I came to the ford at midday with a bearing taken from a name and nothing else. The name was in the book, set down carefully in a single hand, and behind it: no line, no mark, no measurement. The far bank was there in the writing and nowhere else.

I stepped in.

Lano stayed at the lip of the near bank. She did not follow at once. She put her nose to the wet stones where the river touched the land and stood very still, reading whatever was there. Her ears were forward.

The bottom was flat pale stone. Ankle at the first step. Shin by the fourth. The current ran at a steady press against my legs, not asking anything of me, only recording that I was there. I stopped at midcrossing and pressed the staff to the riverbed and held it plumb. The grip came to my wrist. I held that for a moment and noted it.

Rurik was already on the far ledge. He had found a dry crossing I had not seen, some line of stones near the bank, and he sat on a flat rock above the water with his amber eyes on something upstream. He did not look down at me. He flicked his tail once and was still again.

I finished the crossing. On the far bank I opened the book to the name and wrote under it: the depth at midcrossing, the character of the bed, the direction of the run, the bearing taken to reach this point. The name had been right. There was a ford here. At midday. The bottom was stone and the depth was what could be crossed. I wrote all of that.

Lano came over while I was writing. She had waded in somewhere near the edge; her legs were wet to the joint. She pressed against my knee and I put one hand on her back without looking up. When I closed the book she moved off a few steps and shook the water from her coat. Rurik watched this from his ledge with no change in his expression.

I stood at the named place and looked back at the near bank and then forward at the country past the name. The country did not end here. The name had been waiting with no drawing under it and now it had a record. That was the depth and that was the bottom and that was all there was to record.

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