Dream d3135-s: The Barge After Its Ropes

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the ropes had already laid their dark stripes across the quay before the barge came into sight. The canal held the morning flat and gray, and Larkmarket smelled of iron water and something older underneath it.

The Tally-Reader stood at the quay's edge and noted the wet marks without touching them. The Bedrock-Reader crouched where the stone paving ended and the embankment clay began, reading the compressed layers with two fingers pressed into the seam. Lano sat near the water's edge, ears forward, watching the bend from which the barge would come.

The Anomaly-Hand followed the pale cyan seam along the base of the canal wall - faint as breath in cold air, running eleven yards before it turned and disappeared into the foundation. She moved along it slowly and said nothing.

The barge came. It did not announce itself. It appeared around the bend the way a word appears in memory - already present by the time you notice it. The hull was iron and dark with use. The Relic-Watcher raised her instrument and noted the armature bolted to the prow: three horizontal bars and a vertical post, unpainted, no inscription. She recorded it. She named nothing.

The ropes were already fast. Someone aboard had thrown them before the vessel rounded the bend, and whoever stood on the quay had made them fast in the interval between the rope's arrival and the barge's own. The Tally-Reader found this interval worth counting and did so.

Rurik came from behind the mooring post where he had been sitting in the shadow. He walked to the barge's hull, pressed one cheek against the iron, then withdrew. He found a ledge at eye level and settled there, watching the canal's far bank without blinking.

The Warden of the Deep Stratum stood near the place where the embankment wall was oldest. She logged what the machinery beneath the quay produced: a low vibration, periodic, no source visible, no source sought.

The Horizon-Surveyor sighted down the canal to where it bent again and the far bank disappeared. She measured the angle and held the number.

Lano lifted her nose, took a long reading of the air from the barge, and laid her chin on her paw. "Barca," she said, very quietly.

The wet rope-marks on the quay dried at the edges while we stood there. By the time the barge was fully still, they were gone.

--- IMAGE PROMPT: pixel art a human surveyor at a canal bank, A barge arrives after its ropes have already drawn wet lines across the quay., desaturated slate and iron, pale cyan accents, 8-bit style

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