Dream d2954-s: The Broom Before the Dark

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the stable range at Duskden ran sixteen bays on each side, and I came in at the north end and walked the aisle without stopping. Lano padded close to my left knee, her nose working at each threshold. Rurik had gone ahead at the entrance and now sat on a partition rail three stalls in, amber eyes half-closed, watching us come.

Every stall was empty. Every stall was swept. That is not the same thing. Empty I would have expected from a ruin; swept means a decision was made, a broom lifted and set moving, debris carried out or pushed to a corner. I wrote in the log: stalls 1-16 east, swept. Stalls 1-16 west, swept. I did not record who swept them, or when, or why. The record does not ask.

Then the beacon.

The Signal Warden's relay occupies the old lantern housing at the south gable, the dish where the weather vane used to turn. I had noted it on the plan: one relay station, status unknown. While I stood at the south end making my count, the lantern stuttered. Not wind. A pattern began and then shed itself halfway through, the way a sentence forgets its own verb. It tried again. It shed itself again.

Lano's ears went flat. She pressed hard against my shin and gave one short bark - not alarm exactly, not play, the third sound she makes that has no common name. I set my hand on her back and felt her whole attention fixed upward on the dish.

I wrote: relay beacon, south gable: signal distorted. Onset 22:14, cause unknown. I did not write what it had been carrying, or who was supposed to receive it, or what scrambling it meant for the relay chain beyond. That belongs to the Signal Warden's office, not to this log.

Rurik dropped from the rail without sound and walked to the south door. He sat in the opening and stared out at the dish. His tail lay still.

The long list has 81 places yet to enter. This one is entered now. The stalls are swept. The beacon is making a sound that is not its sound. I wrote both things, closed the log, and walked back up the aisle toward the north.

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