Dream d3068-s: The Cistern Returns Light

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the stairs descended past the last marked level into a vault where the air held its own weight without wind. I lowered the lantern over the cistern ledge and watched mercury fall from a seam in the wall - a thin continuous thread, no wider than a finger, arriving at the pool surface with no sound I could name as a splash. It simply arrived and was received.

The Bedrock-Reader crouched at the chamber wall and pressed a palm to a layer of pale ochre stone older than anything above. She said nothing. Rurik slipped past her legs and crossed to the far end of the cistern, where he sat down on a raised ledge and fixed his amber eyes on the wall's seam.

Lano padded to the pool's edge and stopped. Her nose worked the air near the surface. She did not back away.

The Anomaly-Hand had marked three pale cyan emission seams on the approach stair. Here, below the lowest one, there were none - only the raw grey and ochre of the original stratum, untouched by whatever had left traces above. She wrote this down without comment.

The Tally-Reader opened her record and wrote two numbers: depth in spans from the surveyed floor, diameter of the pool. She did not note the flow rate. "Not enough time here yet," she said. I did not argue.

At the base of the far wall a channel exited - a slot no wider than my hand, cut cleanly, too cleanly for natural passage. The Warden of the Deep Stratum stood beside it and made no explanation. She pointed at the cut once, then let her hand fall.

The Relic-Watcher moved the chamber's perimeter and logged three iron armatures bolted to the ceiling at intervals, pointing downward over the pool like fixed fingers. Whatever they had once held was absent. The bolts were clean and very old.

Rurik dropped from his ledge, pressed briefly against the Warden's ankle, then moved to the channel opening and sat down facing the dark inside it.

I set the lantern on the cistern ledge. The mercury pool caught the light and gave it back.

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