Dream d3112-s: What Stone Retains

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where we came to the broken arch from the north side, where the ground was dry and the slate pale as old ash. The Horizon-Surveyor went first, ducking the low keystone, and I followed. The inner face of the arch was dark with yesterday's rain. It had not dried. The stone had pulled the water in and held it there, a slow seep along the mortar courses, and the cold came off it in small waves.

Lano stopped at the threshold, nose working. She sniffed once at the wet stone near the base, then padded through, close to the Horizon-Surveyor's heel. Rurik had come ahead, as he does: he was already on the far cap-stone, watching from above with his amber eyes half-closed.

I pressed my palm to the inner face. The grain was fine, the wet colder than the air. The Anomaly-Hand knelt beside me and traced a hairline of pale cyan along the mortar with one finger, not touching it. The line ran up toward the broken springer where the arch had cracked and dropped its upper courses some season back. The Warden of the Deep Stratum stood in the opening, looking at the rubble heap, and said nothing. That is the warden's way: log it, settle nothing.

The Bedrock-Reader crouched outside, pressing the rod to the base stones. The foundation here runs deep, she said. Old work. The arch came down, but the feet held.

The Tally-Reader marked the distance from the previous station, then the height of the opening. I wrote down: one arch, broken, inner face retaining moisture after twenty-four hours. Condition: dormant. The sky above the break was the colour of white iron.

Lano sat at my feet and looked up through the missing crown at that sky. She made no sound. Rurik dropped from the cap-stone to the rubble below without a pause, picked his way through the loose courses, and stopped in a patch of thin sun on the far side. He washed a paw with the precise indifference he brings to everything.

The Horizon-Surveyor sighted the line from the arch to the next elevation and called the bearing back. I wrote that down too. The Relic-Watcher had not moved from the base of the broken pier, recording the iron armature stub that jutted from the old mortar. The armature was orange with rust and shaped like a question no one would ask.

We did not name what the arch had been. Kestrelfall does not require that of us. We took the measurement and carried it forward.

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