Dream d3152-s: Spoke Clearing the Post

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where we came to Vespermill at the hour when the light thins and nothing moves. The timber gate stood between the road and the millyard, its crossbars weathered to a color between grey and bone. The Tally-Reader paused at the gatepost and touched the wood where the grain had been worn smooth by counted years.

The mill wheel was still. Its spokes hung at angles that suggested the last turn had been deliberate, the last spoke placed just shy of the post. The Bedrock-Reader knelt at the foundation stone and pressed a palm flat against the seam where cut stone met older ground. The Relic-Watcher moved along the wall without speaking, noting an iron armature bolted into the timber above the gate arch, its purpose no longer attached to any mechanism still present.

Lano moved ahead of us, nose low along the threshold, and stopped at the gate latch. She sniffed it twice and sat back, tail still.

The Anomaly-Hand found the first cyan seam near the base of the millpost, a thin line of cold emission running horizontal through the stone as though something had passed through it once at speed and the stone had recorded only the temperature. The Warden of the Deep Stratum stood beside it and said nothing.

I lifted the latch. It moved on the first attempt. The gate swung inward without sound, which seemed wrong for a dormant place, as though the silence was maintained on purpose.

Rurik slipped through before the gate had finished its arc, amber eyes already on the wheel. He crossed the millyard and leaped to the coping stone at the wheel's base, then sat with his back to us and his tail hanging perfectly still.

The Horizon-Surveyor walked to where the millyard met the treeline and took a bearing. The current survey sheet ended here. What lay beyond the treeline was unmarked, and the Horizon-Surveyor said only that the line was clean.

The Tally-Reader had stayed at the gate. When I looked back, that hand was moving in a small precise motion, counting something I had not counted. The spoke nearest the post had not moved. But the count had advanced.

Lano barked once, softly - quieto - and was still after that.

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