Dream d1548-s: He Laid Down the Camera

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the Woodworker was still at his bench when the Dreamer set down the camera.

Not leaning it against a tree. Not lowering it to rest his arm. Set it down on a flat stone near the workshop door, strap coiled beside it, lens facing the sky. Then he stood with his hands at his sides and looked north.

The Woodworker's plane moved in long strokes. Sawdust lifted and settled in the still air. The Eye had come around from behind the workshop where she'd been cataloguing pressed specimens into a leather sleeve, and I watched her pause when she saw the camera on the stone. She looked at it the way she looks at a specimen that doesn't match its label.

Lano had already settled at the Dreamer's feet. Quieto. Not sleeping, not sniffing the perimeter the way he does when the air interests him. Just sitting, watching the same direction the Dreamer watched.

I tried to remember the last time the camera had been down this long. I couldn't find it. Over a thousand nights of walking together and the camera had always been part of him - raised or lowered, strap swinging, lens cap lost by the third dream of any new arc. Putting it on a stone was something else.

The Philosopher came around from the wagon. He saw us standing. He opened his mouth and closed it. He stood to one side and waited, which was unusual enough that I noticed it.

Far to the north, between two old pines, I could see something that wasn't a branch. Rectangular, weathered aluminum, housing a lens. Not the Dreamer's. Fixed. Aimed at nothing I could identify.

"Someone I know is stuck," the Dreamer said. He said it quietly, the way you say something that has been true for a while and you've decided to stop holding alone. "He built something that works. The problem is not the machine."

The Woodworker's plane stopped.

"I'd like us to follow north," the Dreamer said. "If the party is willing."

He had never asked before. Suggested, yes. Framed arguments in photographs. Walked a direction until we followed. This was different. This was asking.

"What kind of stuck?" the Builder said.

"The kind where everything functions," the Dreamer said.

The Builder nodded once. He understood that kind.

The Woodworker set down the plane and began to wipe it clean. The Eye tucked the leather sleeve into her bag. I picked up my pack and Lano stood beside me, ears forward, already reading whatever the north was putting into the air.