Dream d3217-s: Signal Held Above Water

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where Lano went first. She stepped into the ford at Mistbarrow's eastern edge and stood there with the water at her knees, feeling the pull of it, then turned back to look at me. The relay clerk waited on the near bank, the record wrapped in oilcloth and placed in my hands a moment before.

I stepped in. The cold reached my knees at once. I held the oilcloth above my head with both arms raised and found the stones underfoot one by one. Lano followed, moving downstream of me where the ford was shallower.

Halfway across I heard it. Not a sound from any bank, not from any direction I could name. The relay clerk behind me had stopped moving. I turned my head without lowering the record. He was looking at the signal post on the Mistbarrow rise, where the beacon lines converge for the known network. The post was dark and silent. What reached us carried a structure. Not noise. Not a known pattern.

Lano's ears went flat. She stopped in the ford and turned toward the rise, weight forward, neck low, and then she barked once, sharp and certain, sending birds from the sedge in a clatter. Then quiet.

I reached the far bank and set the record on dry stone to look back. The absent witness was already there on the upper path, having come from the survey office. They stood watching the rise, not watching me.

The relay clerk called across the ford in an even voice, the voice of someone who has not yet named what they are looking at. He said the signal pattern matched nothing in the network registry. Structure present. Origin: none established. The settlement would need to decide.

The absent witness knelt beside me and I handed them the oilcloth. They did not open it. They were watching the dark post on the rise and the signal continuing its unrecognized pattern from no known source.

Lano came out of the ford and shook herself dry. Her ears stayed flat. She sat close to my leg and did not take her eyes from the rise.

I stood with cold water on my legs and the record in someone else's hands and nothing settled about any of it.

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