Dream d3165-s: The Row That Leans Away

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where we came to the furrow bank at the warm edge of Nettlefield, and the light was low, and the Tally-Reader set one more mark for the fourth witnessed visit, saying nothing more than the number.

The shoots were strange. The nearest ones, the row closest to the posts, bent outward at their stems, a slight and persistent lean, as though something in the soil beneath the post-line disagreed with their direction. Ten metres back, the farther row stood straight and unremarkable. I walked the verge between them and felt the difference mostly in how the air moved: close to the posts the air was warmer, a degree or two, and the shoots seemed to know it.

Lano moved ahead of me, nose down along the post-line, her whole body attending. She stopped at the third post and sat.

The Anomaly-Hand crouched where the two rows diverged, pressing two fingers flat to the soil, not touching the nearest shoot. The pale cyan seam was there, faint, running between the third and fourth post at a depth I could not see but the Anomaly-Hand had charted before. She recorded the width and noted that it had widened, fractionally.

Rurik had come over the ridge on his own. He found the highest point of the bank, a weathered stub of iron armature not much wider than his body, and arranged himself on top of it, tail hanging down one side, watching the Relic-Watcher work at the far end of the row.

The Relic-Watcher made no note of the cat. She moved along the row recording each armature in silence, nothing named, nothing explained.

I asked the Bedrock-Reader whether the leaning matched the strata below. She looked at the nearest shoot, then at the post, then down. She said the old boundary ran directly under the post-line.

The Horizon-Surveyor was at the edge of the charted sheet, pacing its margin. She did not call back. I watched her figure at the limit of the visible.

Lano stood and walked to me, and I rested my hand on her back for a moment. She trotted forward, the way she always reads the ground before I do.

The Warden of the Deep Stratum stood at the centre post and looked into the soil. She logged the instrument marks that had been there longer than the settlement, and she settled no explanation.

We would come back. The sheet held the visit. The shoots nearest the posts still leaned, warm and persistent, away from something older than the furrow.

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