Dream d3115-s: Cyan at the Fault Line

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the ledge ran east from Kestrelfall under a sky that held no weather, only the flat grey of iron and old slate. The Anomaly-Hand crouched at the nearest bowl, a shallow depression worn into the rock face, its rim faintly luminous with the pale cyan seam that had drawn us here, and laid a wide palm across it, stilling whatever light remained inside. Across the valley floor, the distant wheel stood without motion, its spokes a dark cross against the pale stone. No one approached it. The Tally-Reader noted the stillness in a margin and said nothing further.

Rurik had gone ahead to a higher shelf. From there he watched us, amber eyes unblinking, tail wrapped over his paws. He had been up there since before the light shifted.

Lano was at my heel when it happened. I felt her change before I heard her: a stiffening in her small body, ears dropping flat against her skull, and then a bark, short, sharp, aimed at the cliff wall rather than any of us. I stopped walking. The Warden of the Deep Stratum, who had been reading the unmarked machinery set into the base of the ledge, straightened and looked toward the beacon post at the far shoulder of the outcrop.

The beacon's rhythm had been steady since dawn. Now it came in pulses that did not match, long where they should be short, doubled where there should be one. The Relic-Watcher pressed two fingers to the relay panel and drew them away. The iron armature was warm. It should not have been warm at this hour or in this stone.

The Bedrock-Reader said the strata were unchanged. The Horizon-Surveyor took a bearing and found the survey line intact. Whatever was distorting the signal did not announce itself in any visible surface.

The Anomaly-Hand kept the bowl covered. I wrote: seam active, relay garbled, cause not yet read. The Tally-Reader added a mark that stood apart from the others.

Lano sat between us and the beacon post, ears still flat, watching the cliff wall. Rurik had not moved from his shelf. The wheel in the valley stayed still.

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