Dream d3302-s: The Tower's Long Lean

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the porch chairs had been placed in a ring before anyone arrived, nine of them in a circle with one left empty, and the lamp at the porch post threw a low amber glow that did not reach the field beyond.

The keeper stood at the edge of the boards, facing the settlement. The surveyor had her instrument folded against her side. The relay clerk held the open ledger against her forearm without writing in it. The distant reader sat in one of the chairs, hands loose in her lap. Lano pressed against my leg, her nose aimed at the dark beyond the porch rail.

We had been here before - not I, but the record had. The keeper had sent an account. Now the account had traveled; whatever reached its destination was not here to answer.

The distant reader said nothing. The empty chair was part of the arrangement and no one moved to fill it.

Then Lano's ears went flat.

A sound came from the southern edge of the settlement - not a crash but a subsidence, a long pulling down, the kind of sound a weight makes when it finally gives its argument to the ground. The keeper turned from the rail. The surveyor stepped forward and opened her instrument.

I could see it from the porch: the old relay tower at the corner of two reclaimed lines was leaning. Old concrete, old cable sheaths split and gray - the kind of infrastructure laid before anyone here held title to anything. One of the anchor lines parted with a sound like a slap on still water. The tower listed ten degrees, fifteen. It did not fall.

Lano barked once, short and certain, then was still.

The cables that ran from that tower to the two nearest buildings swayed, and one dipped low enough to pull a section of timber fascia from the nearer structure. It fell without hitting anyone. Dust moved through the lamplight.

The keeper descended the porch steps without looking back at us. The surveyor followed with the instrument open. The relay clerk set the ledger on the empty chair and went after them. The distant reader stood but did not leave the porch.

I stood at the rail with Lano beside me. Her tail was low, her attention fixed on the tower, which held its lean against the sky. The cables swayed. One still carried current - a faint hum, an intermittent blue spark where it had pulled against a bracket.

The ledger sat on the empty chair. The circle waited with one thing in it and one thing absent. The tower held its lean.

No one said what it was. No one said whether it would hold.

---