Dream d3133-s: The Unshared Shadow

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the Tally-Reader had marked fourteen stalls before the fifteenth canvas cover was lifted, and I watched the fifteenth lift at a line of shadow that touched no other. The Relic-Watcher stood at the edge of the iron armature rising from the paving and said nothing, only wrote. Lano trotted ahead, nose low, tracking the join between one cobble and the next.

The market square at Larkmarket was not loud. It opened the way a tide comes in, piece by piece, each piece unaware of the others. The Horizon-Surveyor moved along the east side, placing measurements against the edge where the surveyed sheet ran out, and I followed, keeping the Anomaly-Hand in sight. The pale cyan seams in the cold stone showed at the corner of each stall base, running upward in irregular lines. The Anomaly-Hand marked each one without speaking.

Rurik found the warm pocket where two stall edges met at a southern angle. He settled there and watched the Warden of the Deep Stratum, who crouched over the machinery embedded in the lowest course of paving. What the machinery did was not written down. The Warden had a rule about that.

The Bedrock-Reader arrived from the north end of the square with a rubbing taken from the ground beneath the third stall row. There was stratigraphy here that did not match the foundation survey. I could see it in the way she held the paper, careful to keep the edge from folding. The Tally-Reader asked for the band count and the Bedrock-Reader gave it: seven distinct layers, the lowest unreachable from above.

This was the return visit. The first time we came to Larkmarket the iron armature had been covered by a tarpaulin and we had taken it for a vendor's awning frame. Now the tarpaulin was gone and the Relic-Watcher had two pages of notes. I did not add to them.

Lano lifted her head at a sound from the far stall, ears pitched forward. Then she put her nose back to the cobble line and resumed whatever survey she was conducting there. Rurik watched her from the warm pocket, tail still.

The shadow moved. Another cover lifted. The Tally-Reader marked fifteen.

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