Dream d3065-s: Unanchored Stair

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the sluice gate of Fennbrook stood at the meeting of two kinds of stone. The canal below ran still and black. Above it, the aqueduct sent water along a channel that had no visible support, its carved steps rising into air without footing, each one suspended an arm's length above the last.

The Horizon-Surveyor pressed a hand to the last recorded stone and said nothing. The Tally-Reader opened the ledger and wrote the number that stopped there: one hundred and twenty-seven. He did not round it.

Lano had already gone ahead. She stood at the base of the floating steps, nose lifted, then sat and watched the water pass beneath the first unsupported stone. She did not bark.

Rurik had taken the high position - atop the sluice gate's iron handle, which was fixed and corroded and had not turned in years. He sat there with amber eyes half-closed, watching the Bedrock-Reader trace her fingers along the carved channel wall.

"The stone is not Fennbrook stone," the Bedrock-Reader said. She did not speculate further.

The Anomaly-Hand crouched at the joint where the aqueduct met the gate frame. A pale cyan line ran between the courses of ashlar - not painted, not mineral staining she recognized. She measured its width with a folded paper strip: two fingers, consistent. She wrote that down and nothing else.

The Relic-Watcher recorded the iron armature along the aqueduct's underside. Brackets at intervals, each facing down, each empty. She wrote their spacing without interpretation.

The Warden of the Deep Stratum came last. She climbed the fixed ladder to the sluice platform and looked down into the canal, then up along the floating steps.

"The machinery underneath precedes every settlement record here," she said. "By how much I cannot say."

I reached the platform beside her. The floating steps did not move. The water running along the aqueduct above made a sound I had not expected - not a rush but a low, even drone, as if the channel were very long and the stone had memorized it.

Lano picked her way up the ladder behind me and sat at my heel. Rurik did not follow. He remained on the gate handle below, watching.

The Tally-Reader's ledger was accurate and would not change. The step above us hung without support. Beyond it, a second step. Beyond that, a third, diminishing into the night air above the canal.

The surveyed sheet ended here. What lay past the third step had not yet been tallied.

---