Dream d3107-s: The Unmoored Shadow

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where we stood at the iron railing of the roof walk and watched the afternoon light shift across Vesperwharf below.

The Horizon-Surveyor had her back to the wind, her sheet pressed flat against the railing. The Tally-Reader counted the berths aloud in a low voice, not rounding: fourteen occupied, nine empty, the spacing irregular where three vessels had left before dawn.

Lano pressed her nose to a gap in the railing and watched the water, ears forward, tail still.

The shadow came from the east. Not cast by any cloud we could name from where we stood. It moved the way shadows move when the source is distant, slow and sustained, crossing the face of the harbor in a single deliberate passage. The Anomaly-Hand put a hand over her eyes and tracked it without speaking.

It crossed only the empty berths.

Where a hull sat low in the water, the light held. The occupied slips remained bright, the painted bow markings visible, the dockhands moving in ordinary afternoon sun. But the nine empty slips, the ones where the iron cleats had nothing tied to them, the ones where the water moved without interruption, those passed through shadow one by one, in sequence, as if the darkness knew what was present and what was not.

The Warden of the Deep Stratum did not offer an explanation. He watched, wrote something in his notebook, and did not share it.

The Relic-Watcher stepped back from the railing and looked at the iron armatures mounted at the roof's edge, old crane fittings from some prior use of this building. She did not name what they had been for.

Rurik had found the warm stone of the parapet. He sat with amber eyes open, watching the shadow's path below. His tail moved once. He did not look at any of us.

Lano padded to the far side of the roof walk, sniffed along the stone seam near the Anomaly-Hand's feet, and sat. She looked down at the harbor and said, softly: "Mira."

The Bedrock-Reader had her palm flat against the rooftop. Whatever she was reading there, she kept it. The shadow had passed. The empty berths were still dark where it had crossed, the occupied ones still lit.

The Tally-Reader did not change her count.

We stayed until the light began to flatten. Below us the harbor continued in two registers: the occupied slips where men moved and lines held, and the empty ones where the water carried only itself.

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