Dream d3166-s: Warm Through the Wrist

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the potting bench was long, its surface weathered to the color of old iron shavings, and the morning carried the particular warmth of Nettlefield on a held day. I set the sheet flat against the wood and anchored its corners with two clay pots before the Tally-Reader bent to study it.

The sheet held both rows in the upper third. I copied them onto the working page while Lano sat at my heel, her nose tipped toward the bench, reading something in the grain of the wood that I could not. I left the bare patch below the second row unfilled. That space belonged to what had not yet been spoken.

The Bedrock-Reader stood at the far end of the bench, one hand resting on the edge without pressing, reading the strata exposed where someone had once chipped the bench-leg free of old mortar. The Relic-Watcher remained three paces off, recording the iron armature that crossed the bench's back rail - a single bar, pinned at both ends - without naming what it had once supported.

Rurik moved along the potting bench from the low end, his amber eyes ahead of him, his paws setting without sound on the clay-dusted surface. He reached the iron armature and sat beside it, staring at the point where the wall met the bench frame. His tail moved once, then settled.

The Horizon-Surveyor had positioned herself at the door, measuring where the sheet ended against the visible line of Nettlefield's far wall. She said nothing. The Anomaly-Hand crouched at the base of the bench where the pale cyan seam ran - a thin line in the cold stone footing, visible only at this angle.

The Warden of the Deep Stratum logged the seam, the hour, the present condition: warm. The fifth witnessed visit. I kept the dated account beside the earlier one and did not merge them. The first visit had been dry and brief; this return held its heat differently.

I looked at the bare patch. The Tally-Reader kept the count without rounding: one hundred thirty-seven places on the sheet, forty allotted without yet being spoken. I wrote nothing in the unfilled space. The copy was complete in its incompleteness.

When I pressed my palm flat against the bench's surface, the warmth moved up through my wrist like something patient, rising from the stone beneath rather than from the sun.

Lano lifted her nose to the seam and gave a small sound at the edge of it: cerca.

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