Dream d3156-s: The Shadow Left Empty

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the carpenter bench stood against the north wall of Vespermill the same as before, the same grey scoring on its face, the same cold brace at the near corner. The room held less light than on the first visit. The Anomaly-Hand moved to the floor along the eastern edge of the bench and pointed to the pale cyan bleeding up through a crack in the flagstone, steady and dim, the same seam we had logged the first time and could not explain then or now.

I spread the paper on the bench and found the pencil already lying there, as though someone had set it down minutes before and not come back.

The Bedrock-Reader stood at my left shoulder and read the stratum lines she carried against what she could see beneath the gap in the boards. The Relic-Watcher crossed to the far corner where the largest armature leaned against the wall. She did not touch it. She recorded its condition by eye and posture only.

The shadow was what I had come back for. On the first visit we had measured the spoke hole and marked its arc. What we had not completed was the shadow: the shape the absent spoke would have cast at this hour had it been present. I pencilled it in carefully, following the line of where light would have broken against wood. I did not add the spoke. The paper shows only the edge of the shadow, the faint graphite arc that describes absence rather than presence, nothing more. The Tally-Reader watched my hand and kept her own count in silence.

Lano lay on the flagstone beneath the bench, her nose tracking the margin of the cyan seam without crossing it. Her ears lifted once, then settled. She pressed her muzzle to the cold stone near the seam and breathed out once. The sound was "sombra." Then she curled tighter and was still.

Rurik had come through the low gap in the exterior wall sometime before us. He sat on the shelf above the bench, watching the armature in the corner with slow amber attention. When I put the pencil down, he blinked once and shifted his weight, then went back to watching.

The Warden of the Deep Stratum crouched beside the gap in the flagstone. Not to probe it. Only to look.

The Horizon-Surveyor stood at the window and held the sheet against the failing light, reading where the surveyed edge fell against what lay outside. She did not speak.

Outside, Vespermill made no sound. I set the paper aside and did not add a spoke. The dormant place received us a second time.

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