Dream d3104-s: The High Water's Argument

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the storehouse at Vesperwharf held the day's stillness like water in a cupped hand. The boards came in two - carried by the keeper, one under each arm, their surfaces gray-brown with brine and years. She set them against the iron post near the east window without ceremony, and the room leaned toward them.

The Tally-Reader moved first. She laid a strip of twine along the upper edge of one board, then the other, fingers pressing flat where the highest watermark had stained the wood a deeper brown. A finger's width. Not a rounding error. Not the same storm seen twice through different eyes.

The Bedrock-Reader crouched at the base of the post, tracing where the floor met the wall with one nail, reading something in the angle of the stones. The Anomaly-Hand crossed to the far wall where a seam of pale cyan ran through the cold slate - barely wider than a scratch - and said nothing, only watching it as though it might move.

Lano pressed her nose to the edge of the lower board, ears flat, then sneezed once and sat back. Her tail swept the gritstone floor in a slow arc.

The keeper waited without speaking. She was older than I had expected, her hands marked by the same kind of repetitive work the boards recorded - tally lines and rope-burn, a small silver hook on a cord at her wrist.

Rurik had taken the high shelf above the window, curled into the narrow band of afternoon light. He watched the Tally-Reader with amber eyes that did not blink.

The Horizon-Surveyor stood at the open doorway looking out toward the harbor mouth, as if the answer might return with the tide if she kept watch. The Warden of the Deep Stratum set one hand against the inner wall near where the lower mark was recorded - not measuring, only feeling the temperature of the stone.

The Relic-Watcher copied both marks into the record exactly as they appeared: two high waters, unnamed, unresolved. I watched her write it and did not offer a preference.

The keeper finally said that both boards had hung in the same house for sixty years, one on the harbor side and one on the inland side of the wall, and that neither had been moved. The Tally-Reader nodded slowly, looking from one stain to the other, the twine still between her fingers.

Lano padded to the doorway and looked out toward the water.

I kept the dated account beside the earlier one, as the work required. The difference was a finger. I wrote neither explanation beneath the two marks.

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