Dream d3143-s: Amber Inside the Iron

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where we came back to the cinder terrace at the hour when the light goes flat and the ash underfoot holds the warmth longer than the air above it. Cindergreen again. The second arrival carries a different weight than the first; familiarity has made room for detail, and what we passed over quickly before waits now at the edge of the ledger.

The Horizon-Surveyor planted the rod at the same crack in the cinder slab as before and read it without ceremony. The Tally-Reader opened to the ruled line where the previous count had been left and resumed from that number rather than from zero. The Anomaly-Hand pressed a palm against the cold stone at the terrace's edge and held it there a long time.

Lano moved ahead of the party to the iron block. It stands at the center of the terrace exactly as we left it: shoulder-height, seamless, unmarked. She circled it once with her nose to the ground, then sat and faced its eastern side. Her ears came forward.

The Relic-Watcher stood beside her and said nothing, which from the Relic-Watcher means: look.

The amber lights came in as the sun dropped behind the far sinter ridge. Not from behind the block. Inside it. Four rectangles arranged as windows in a wall that has no rooms. They held their color for as long as it took the Warden of the Deep Stratum to uncap a pen and write down the time.

Rurik found the face of the block that had absorbed the day's heat and pressed himself flat against it, tail settled, eyes fixed on the cinder at his paws. He did not look at the lights.

The Bedrock-Reader traced the outline of one amber rectangle with a finger held a handsbreadth from the iron, not touching the surface. "This stratum does not correspond to any layer I have opened," she said.

I recorded what I could observe. Four amber forms. Internal. No heat measurable on the outer surface. No sound from within. The Horizon-Surveyor called out the angle of the remaining sun against the block's eastern face; the Tally-Reader entered the number and ruled a line beneath it.

Then the amber was gone. Lano waited. Rurik waited. The cinder terrace went dark at its usual rate, and none of us moved toward the block.

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