Dream d3064-s: Stone Before the Count

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the towpath ran flat alongside the canal, and the water held the colour of slate at evening, still enough to reflect the hills but not still enough to be trusted. Lano trotted at the front, her nose working the distance before her feet reached it, and Rurik moved in the verge-grass beside the water, appearing and disappearing where the reeds grew thick.

The Tally-Reader walked with the ledger open but did not write. There was nothing to enter yet. One hundred and twenty-seven places surveyed, fifty-two of them walked, seventy-five still unreached, and now the canal path opening into something the sheet did not hold.

The Horizon-Surveyor stopped where the towpath curved and pointed without speaking. Ahead, the slate hills rose in terraces, each cut-face a different shade of grey, and between the cuts the settlement of Fennbrook showed its first buildings: low stone, narrow-windowed, built against the quarry wall as if the quarry had simply stopped and the people had moved into the notch it left.

The Anomaly-Hand walked close to the canal bank. In the stonework of the lock at the path's edge there was a pale emission, a line running through the joint between two courses of cut slate, barely a finger's width, throwing no heat. She did not touch it. She noted the compass bearing and the height above the waterline and said nothing else.

Rurik reached the lock gate first. He sat down in the gap between the gate post and the wall and stared at the far side of the water. His tail made one slow arc and stopped.

The Relic-Watcher crossed before us. On the near wall of the lock chamber, half below waterline, an iron armature was set into the stone: a bracket, or the remains of one, its purpose not legible from above. She recorded the dimensions by eye and moved on.

The Bedrock-Reader crouched at the base of the first quarry terrace and pressed a palm flat to the cut face. The rock here was older than the settlement's foundation stones. She could tell that much. She stood and brushed the grit from her hand and did not say what she had read.

The Warden of the Deep Stratum walked behind us all. He carried nothing. He logged in silence.

Lano had gone ahead and was waiting at the first building's corner, sitting square, ears up. She had something in her mouth: a flat piece of slate, thumbnail-sized, smooth on one face. I reached down and took the stone from her; she let go of it and looked up at me, and I held it while the party walked past into Fennbrook and the canal went dark behind us.

IMAGE PROMPT: pixel art a towpath along a canal approaching a quarry settlement, walking figures alongside, 8-bit style

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