Dream d3070-s: The Reckoning Ends at Dusk

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the quarry channel ran loud beneath the bridge and the mercury smell faded behind us as we stepped onto the cut stone. Lano trotted ahead, nose low against the parapet, pausing once to sniff a crack where the mortar had pulled away. Rurik picked his way behind her, placing each paw with the deliberateness of a creature reading something invisible in the grain.

The Horizon-Surveyor stopped at the midpoint of the span and looked north, where the surveyed sheet ended. She said nothing. The Tally-Reader stood beside her and did not round the number up.

On the far bank, the unreckoned stratum began without announcement. A monolith of pale stone stood between two ironworks frames, neither touching the other. The Relic-Watcher moved toward it. The Anomaly-Hand crouched and traced one finger along a seam in the lower course where a faint cyan emission bled through the mortar joint. She did not name it. The Warden of the Deep Stratum opened her log and wrote the coordinates and the emission color and drew a line beneath that entry.

The Bedrock-Reader read the exposed face of the bridge abutment, where the courses shifted from limestone to something older and darker. She placed her palm flat against the junction. Then she stepped back.

Rurik had already gone ahead. He sat in the middle of the far-bank path, tail curled around his forepaws, amber eyes fixed on the space between the monolith and the nearest ironworks frame. He did not move.

Lano set down a small smooth stone she had been carrying in her mouth since the sluice, leaving it at the foot of the abutment.

The dusk closed over the channel and the sound of the water came up through the bridge stones into our boots.

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