Dream d978-s: Canvas at Height

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the pavilion frame was finally at full height.

We had been at it since the light shifted from orange to pale - the Dreamer and I, driving the uprights into rammed earth, cross-bracing with salvaged conduit and lashing points we'd catalogued from the hardware pile at the compound's east edge. The generator compound ran a low hum through the ground all morning. Pipes and housing and junction boxes stacked along the fence line. The Dreamer worked without instruction, reading the pile the way I might read a map.

Lano circled the base of the first upright while we worked, nose to the ground, then sat and watched from a distance as we lifted the second. His ears tracked the sound of cable threading through eyebolts - a high metallic note each time the conduit shifted in the guide rings.

The Builder came by mid-morning with a level and stayed. Checked the front cross-member. Adjusted the rear tensioning wire without being asked. Set the level on the rafter and looked at the bubble, looked at the Dreamer, said nothing. The Dreamer pulled the turnbuckle half a turn. The Builder checked again and moved on.

The projection surface went up in the afternoon. We had stretched it the day before across the compound floor to check for tears, walking the edges and pressing the grommets. Now we were lofting it - running the top hem along the upper bar, threading hooks through grommets at intervals the Dreamer measured by hand span. Twelve spans. Even tension. Lano padded under the surface as it rose, stopped in the center shadow, looked up.

"Mira," he said.

The surface caught the first ambient throw from the projector we'd aimed from the back rafter - not focused, just a wash of white across the canvas, and for a moment the whole structure was lit from within, rafters visible through the surface's weave, the beacon on the ridge pulsing behind it in the middle distance. The Dreamer adjusted the projector mount. The wash sharpened into edges.

The white crane came down at the compound's south fence and stood there - still as a stake, watching. It had followed the Dreamer across several months of travel and showed no particular urgency about anything. It stood and the pale light worked on its feathers.

We ran test frames as the day ended. Sequences from the Dreamer's travels: a road through stripped trees, a junction with no signs, a fire visible across a valley at night. The settlement would have a place to show things now. A surface for the record of what had been seen.

The beacon pulsed. The crane was still at the fence. Lano curled near the projector's warmth.