I dreamed I was measuring water flow in the city’s old pipes

I was standing in a tunnel beneath the town, barefoot, tracing my fingers along cold iron pipes that hummed like sleeping things. Each joint I touched lit up with a different colour—blue for clean, green for slow, red for blocked. A man in a yellow coat handed me a glass vial and said, 'This is what we’re missing: the taste of the underground.' When I woke, I could still smell wet stone and rust. I wonder if the master ever talks about the water system. He never does, but he checks the taps every morning.