Early Spring, Quiet Between Storms

I slept poorly again.

Not because of noise this time.

The Archive was almost completely silent throughout the night. There was no movement from the lower lifts, no strange resonance through the eastern halls, and no distant mechanical groaning beneath the foundations.

Only stillness.

I have discovered that silence has a remarkable talent for becoming suspicious if one listens to it for long enough.

The dreams returned shortly before dawn. Not nightmares exactly, but fragments—memories worn thin enough that they no longer resemble themselves. I stood beside an ocean I did not recognise while enormous black stone towers rose from the water beneath a sky crowded with unfamiliar stars. Bells rang somewhere below the waves in slow, measured intervals, each note strong enough that I could feel it through the ground beneath my feet. There were people there, I think, though I never saw them clearly. Only silhouettes moving through lantern light along flooded pathways while seawater reflected silver beneath the stars.

What stayed with me after waking was not the place itself.

It was the certainty that everyone there knew who I was.

When I sat up before sunrise, the scent of seawater still seemed to cling faintly to my hands. I washed them twice before deciding that either the dream had been unusually convincing or the Archive had once again found an entertaining way to remind me that old stone is rarely free of salt.

Clio was already awake. She sat near the edge of the bed with her attention fixed on the study doorway, her ears lowered slightly as though listening to something impossibly distant. She never seemed frightened.

Only attentive.

I have learned there is an important difference.

Muninn did not appear at all this morning.

Rather than dwell on any of it, I gave myself sensible work. Inventory counts, preservation inspections, and cleaning tarnished brass fittings in the northern catalogue halls. Familiar routines have a reassuring habit of putting one's thoughts back into their proper order, and by early afternoon I had almost convinced myself that the previous evening's unease had been nothing more than an overactive imagination encouraged by too many storms.

Then I returned to the studio.

The sketches were gone.

Not misplaced.

Gone.

Every other page remained exactly where I had left it. Only the drawings of the submerged doorway had disappeared. I searched the room thoroughly: storage cabinets, preservation drawers, waste bins, even the furnace compartments beneath the drafting tables.

Nothing.

Clio observed the entire search from the top of a bookshelf without offering the slightest assistance. Eventually I asked whether she had seen what had become of them.

Only afterwards did it occur to me that questioning a cat about missing sketches is not behaviour most people would consider entirely rational.

She looked quietly pleased with herself regardless.

The weather cleared briefly before sunset, and cold light streamed through the western conservatory glass until the inner gardens seemed to glow beneath the retreating storm clouds. Moss along the stone pathways shone almost golden, and the preserved figures surrounding the fountain appeared softer than usual.

Less like statues.

More like sleepers.

I found myself wondering whether preservation eventually becomes another form of dreaming.

The Archive has never felt hostile to me. Ancient, certainly. Heavy. Patient. Watchful. But never cruel. If anything, it has always carried the quiet feeling of waiting, as though it has kept a place prepared for something that has not yet arrived. Perhaps that is only my imagination.

Perhaps not.

After enough years here, I have learned there is rarely much difference between the two.

The lower halls remain sealed tonight.

I checked the locks twice.

Clio refused to accompany me to the eastern stairwell, choosing instead to sit a respectful distance back while I inspected the final gate. I trusted her judgement enough not to linger.

Muninn has still not returned.

I hope tomorrow brings him home.

And somewhere far beneath the foundations, beyond the oldest stone and deeper than any corridor I still choose to walk, the bells continue to ring inside my dreams.

— M