Dream d3132-s: The Porter's Hour

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the gateway at Larkmarket stood wider than any we had entered on the current sheet - wide enough that three carts could pass abreast and leave room at either jamb for a standing figure. We came at the hour when a dark iron disc, mounted high on the lintel, casts its shadow fully across the threshold stones. A porter waited at the inner edge of that shadow and did not move.

The Tally-Reader counted seven courses of fitted granite between lintel and road. The Relic-Watcher recorded three iron armatures bracketed into the east jamb - more than we had tallied at any gate before on this road. The Anomaly-Hand crouched where the shadow met dressed stone and ran a finger along a pale cyan seam cutting diagonally through the granite, indifferent to the joints.

Lano sat beside me and watched the porter, her nose moving in slow arcs. Rurik had found a ledge where the jamb thickened, six courses up, and settled there with his tail hanging free. He watched the disc.

The shadow moved. The threshold crossing takes longer than you expect: each minute the dark oval shortened by a handspan until its trailing edge cleared the last stone and full light fell across the road. The porter stepped aside without gesture. I walked through.

Inside, the market had not opened. The stalls stood with their canvas still tied. The air carried river clay and something metallic I could not name. The Bedrock-Reader knelt at the apron's inner edge and pressed two fingers where the paving changed - large slabs outside, smaller cobbles within. A different quarry, she said. A later laying. The Horizon-Surveyor looked east along the market's long axis and held the line with her eyes without writing anything down.

Rurik dropped from the ledge without sound and went ahead between the stalls.

Lano trotted after him, then stopped and barked back at me - "mira" - once, short.

I followed.

The Warden of the Deep Stratum had stayed at the gate and was looking at the porter, who had resumed his position at the shadow's edge. The disc would cast again at evening. He would wait for that too.

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