Dream d1566-s: He Carries It Lowered

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the Weather Reader said, very low, "he hasn't raised it."

She meant the Dreamer, ahead of us on the descent. The whole leg down the tamped switchback he carried the camera lowered, both hands wrapped around the housing, the lens pointed straight at the path rolling under his boots. Not slung. Not at his hip. Held out in front of him like an instrument he was reading, except there was nothing to read but dirt and the next footfall and the next.

The light came down the switchback in tilted bands, descending with us, and the Dreamer walked through each band without lifting the lens an inch. The strap hung slack. His thumb rested on the housing where the shutter was, and never moved. I watched the back of the camera the entire way down - the dark rectangle of it, the path sliding beneath it - and waited for the small habitual jerk of him bringing it up to his eye.

It never came.

"He hasn't raised it," the Weather Reader said again, not to me, just confirming it to the air, the way you say a thing twice to make sure it happened.

The switchback tamped down hard underfoot, packed by feet that had gone this way before us. The Dreamer kept the lens on the ground. Whatever he was photographing, if he was photographing at all, it was only the descent itself - the path, accepted, one frame held the entire way down and never taken.

We followed the lowered lens down the light.