Dream d3127-s: The Second Horizon

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the ridge shoulder held cold - not the cold of elevation alone, but something drawn up from the strata, the kind the Bedrock-Reader finds with a bare palm against exposed surface. I watched that palm move across the dark banding and pause where one layer met the next, and the pause said more than any notation.

The column stood where it had always stood. The Relic-Watcher circled it without closing the circle, recording the iron armatures where they emerged from the facing stone. Nothing was named. The Tally-Reader stood apart and counted the exposed courses silently, lips barely moving, not rounding.

Then I saw it: far above the moss line, a thin reflection lay across the column's face like a second horizon. Not the sun - the sun was low and angled differently. Something in the air above, or in the stone itself, catching what remained of the light and laying it flat.

The Anomaly-Hand moved to the pale cyan seam at the column's base. A finger hovered without touching. The emission was faint at this hour, barely distinguishable from the general pallor of the exposed rock, but the Anomaly-Hand marked the position and width in the ledger, then measured the distance to the reflection above and marked that too.

Lano had come up the ridge quietly. She sat near the column's base with her nose turned upward, reading something in the air I could not read. Her tail moved once. Then she was still.

Rurik found the warmest face of the column - the one that had taken afternoon light longest - and pressed his flank against it. His amber eyes fixed on the reflection, the thin line of it, as if he was waiting for it to move.

The Horizon-Surveyor stepped to the ridge's edge and measured where the surveyed sheet ended. The Warden of the Deep Stratum had not spoken since we arrived. Now the Warden knelt and placed one ear against the exposed face near the seam. Listened. Stood. Made no explanation.

The reflection held for a long time. When it began to fade - not because the light changed, but because something in the air above shifted - the Tally-Reader added one to the carried count without ceremony. The road does not round.

Lano picked her way down the first section of the slope. Rurik waited until she had gone, then leaped to a low outcrop and sat watching the column until it was too dark to watch.

I wrote the date beside the earlier account and did not close the record.

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