Dream d3309-s: The Unanswered Station

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the ford crossing at the edge of Aldergreen lay in shallow dark, the stream cold against my boots as I waded to the far bank where the kept grass ended and the wild started. Lano had crossed ahead of me, her small white shape already shaking water from her paws on the far stones.

The surveyor stood at the near bank with his instruments. The relay clerk held the account ledger against her chest. A keeper of the place stood at the margin where the mowed edge met the uncut grass - she had stood there in the earlier accounts, and she stood there still.

Then the beacon lamp at the corner post began to pulse unevenly. Not wind. The flame held steady behind its glass, but the signal it threw against the reeds was wrong - long where it should have been short, silent where it should have carried a mark. The relay clerk looked up from the ledger. Her hands went still on the cover.

Lano turned from the far bank. Her ears went flat against her skull, not the flat of cold but the flat of warning, and she gave one sharp bark across the water that the ford stones caught and held a moment before the stream took it.

"The morning relay," the surveyor said quietly, not a question. He was already watching the beacon. "Something is in the encoding."

The keeper's eyes moved to the lamp and then past it, toward the track. She didn't move to repair it. There was nothing to repair with hands.

I waded back to the near bank. The ledger the relay clerk held showed the account correctly - the four visits, the dormant condition, the water level recorded at the ford - all of it legible. But the beacon was still misfiring, and when I looked toward the next station marker down the track, that post's answering signal was dark when it should have answered back.

Lano pressed against my leg, wet from the crossing, trembling slightly in a way that was not cold. I kept my hand on her back and felt her watching the dark beyond the track.

The keeper remained at her margin. The surveyor made a note. The relay clerk marked a small notation at the foot of the page: signal irregularity observed, station four dark, encoding status unknown.

She capped the pen. The beacon pulsed again, wrong rhythm, and the stream went on regardless.

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