Dream d3108-s: The Ring Reaches the Cord

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the rain had come in off the water before we reached the cord, and the harbour court stones were dark and slick under our feet. The same length of rope lay where it had lain in the earlier account, pressed flat against worn granite, and the Tally-Reader crouched over it without touching while I held the ring out until the shadow it cast fell precisely across the cord. The shadow and the cord aligned. I noted that down.

Lano moved ahead of the others, nose low along the quayside. Rurik had taken a high perch on the iron bollard to our left, amber eyes moving across the far wall of the harbour court.

Then Lano's ears went flat.

She stopped - a small white figure against grey stone - and turned toward the south wall, and barked once, sharp and certain.

The Bedrock-Reader heard it. We all did. The sound came a moment later: a grinding not from the surface but from below, the kind that travels up through your soles before your ears register it. The south end of the reclaimed quay - the older section, the one the Anomaly-Hand had noted pale cyan seaming in, two visits before - shifted. A hand's width of daylight opened at the joint where old stonework met the newer infill. A cable running along that wall, thick and corroded, went taut and then fell slack.

The Warden of the Deep Stratum moved toward it. The Horizon-Surveyor caught the warden's arm. Not yet.

The Relic-Watcher did not move. Their eyes were on the storehouse at the head of the quay, its east wall resting on those same foundations, and I watched the wall and the wall very slightly tilted. Not much. A degree, perhaps less. But it had been plumb on the last visit.

Rurik came down from the bollard without haste and pressed against my leg.

Lano stayed where she was, ears still flat, watching the line where the quay met the storehouse wall, waiting for the next sound.

The Tally-Reader opened their count-book and wrote a number without speaking it aloud.

The cord still lay where it had lain. The ring's shadow still crossed it. The rain did not stop.

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