Dream d3140-s: The Gauge Below the Line

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the road out of Larkmarket ran between low walls of fitted stone and the morning air carried the smell of coal smoke and old metal. The Tally-Reader walked beside me counting the boundary markers aloud, not rounding, and the numbers fell behind us one by one as the gate tower shrank to a notch against the pale sky.

The Relic-Watcher paused at the first turning. There was a clock mounted on the gatepost, a large-faced iron thing with a single hand, and it read a time that did not match the hour. None of us set it. The Relic-Watcher looked at it without touching it, noted something in the record, and we moved on. The market's own time stayed behind us.

It was the Warden of the Deep Stratum who stopped at the fuel store. The settlement keeps a cache here at the outgoing junction, three drums under a corrugated shelter, and when the Warden lifted the first drum it barely moved. The second was lighter than it should have been. The third rolled with a sound like a stone in a tin, almost nothing inside.

Lano's ears went flat. She stood still in the road, nose working the air ahead, and then she barked once, sharp and certain, before pressing herself against my leg. I put my hand on her back and felt the tension in her.

The Anomaly-Hand came forward and looked at the drums. The salvage bay behind the shelter was nearly bare, a few coiled lengths of conduit and one cracked sheet of aluminum. What had been there on the last account was gone or used. The Horizon-Surveyor measured the distance to the next known cache on the sheet without speaking for a moment, then said the number: three days out.

The Bedrock-Reader crouched by the shelter wall and put a hand to the stone. The ground here is stable, that much is unambiguous. But stability is not fuel.

We did not turn back. The Tally-Reader updated the count, and the number it now carried was smaller than what we had expected to carry. Rurik appeared from behind the drums, sat between two of them, and stared out at the road ahead with his amber eyes half-closed. He did not move when the Horizon-Surveyor began to walk. He moved when he was ready.

Lano trotted ahead and then stopped and looked back at me, then ahead again. The road stretched past the limit of the sheet, into ground the Horizon-Surveyor had not yet measured. The Larkmarket clock kept its own wrong time behind us, and we kept ours, and they were not the same.

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