Dream d3102-s: The Breath Behind the Bronze

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the harbour steps were wet with the last of the tide, and we came down them in a line, our boots finding the grain of each riser by feel.

The Tally-Reader went first, counting the steps under her breath. The Bedrock-Reader pressed one palm to the harbour channel wall where the strata showed as pale lines in the dark stone, reading what the water had exposed. Above us, the bronze tide ring hung on its iron post - a wide circle the colour of old coin - and its shadow on the water came a breath late. Not by much, but enough to notice, enough that the Anomaly-Hand paused on the fourth step down and looked at it twice before continuing.

Rurik had come with us from the upper quay. He picked his way over the wet iron armature crossing the lowest step and settled on a flat ledge just above the waterline, amber eyes turned toward the ring. He made no sound.

The pale cyan seams ran through the stone of the harbour wall - three or four lines rising toward the waterline, faint enough that the Warden of the Deep Stratum recorded them without comment, her chalk moving in short strokes across her board. I did not ask what she thought.

The Relic-Watcher stood apart, facing the ring. She had not moved since we descended. The ring was cast iron or had been; something had laid bronze colour across it, and whether that was the tide or something older was not a question any of us put into words.

Lano nosed along the hem of the lowest step where the water darkened the stone, and then sat back and looked up at the ring with her ears raised. "Quieta," she said, and was.

The Horizon-Surveyor had her glass out but she was not reading the water. She was measuring where the harbour channel ended and the open bay began - the line the tide ring was placed to mark on approach. She noted something and closed the glass.

The shadow on the water shifted with the swell, and the ring above did not shift at the same moment. The interval between them was the length of one breath held and released. The Tally-Reader wrote it down, and we climbed back to the quay with wet on our boots and that small displacement carried forward, unnamed.

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