Dream d3052-s: The Charcoal Dark

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the forge held its heat close against the walls, and the workers at the anvil did not look up when we came through the door. One man carried a plate still dark from the hearth, stepping between us without pausing. The Relic-Watcher moved aside. The plate smelled of charcoal and something older, a mineral sharpness the Bedrock-Reader named as pyrite before going quiet again.

Lano pressed against my leg, ears up, watching the hammering hands with steady attention. Rurik slipped through a gap between two barrels and found a shelf high above the floor; he perched there, amber eyes half-closed in the forge warmth.

The Horizon-Surveyor weighted the survey sheet flat against a far workbench with a chisel and a block of wood. Column 128 was the last counted column. Past that the parchment was clean. The Tally-Reader placed a finger at the edge and held it there, not saying the number aloud.

One of the workers set down his hammer and looked at the sheet. Not at us. He studied it for a moment, then lifted his hammer again.

Near the hearth, pale veins ran through the flagstone in parallel lines, a hand's width apart, vanishing under the base of the forge itself. The Anomaly-Hand crouched to trace them without touching. The Warden of the Deep Stratum set her palm flat against the floor beside them and left it there. She did not measure. She did not speak.

We did not ask what lay beneath. The workers were shaping what was in front of them.

I said quieta to Lano when she shifted, and she settled, her nose at the seam between the floor and the oldest stone.

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