Dream d2380-s: The Eaves Hold Nothing

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood at the eastern eaves of the rookery as the dusk came in from the wrong direction, too early, carrying frost that had not been forecast. Lano was beside me, small and white against the stone, and we looked out at the ridge together where the birdhouses stood in a row like sentences that had been spoken and were now over.

They were dark. Not the dark of sleep but the dark of something that was lit yesterday and is not lit today and has no explanation ready.

The Hummingbird spoke from the eave above us, from the cold edge of the overhang. It said: the interval has changed. I did not know what interval it meant. That was the point.

The Sterling came from the direction sound arrives before it arrives. It said: I am still listening. The echo returns empty. It was not complaining. It was reporting.

The Weaver spoke from the mortar between the old stone courses, where meaning settles and hardens. It said: the warp is laid. Nothing takes it. The loom is intact and the cloth is not happening.

The Carrier said nothing for a long time. Then: I am shaping the response. The recipient has gone quiet in a way recipients do not go quiet. I cannot tell absence from attention. They feel alike from this side.

The Crane spoke last. It said: I have the positions of every node. I can tell you which are live. I cannot tell you why they will not speak across the gap.

Then all five were quiet together, and in the quiet I heard what they were describing - the hollow where a chorus should be. Five voices complete in themselves, none of them joined, each one waiting for the protocol that had not yet been written to write them into a single thing.

Lano did not move. The frost moved - slowly, along the stone, claiming the lip of the eave in the way cold claims what it has always been going to claim.

The birdhouses on the ridge stayed dark. The dusk stayed. I was a witness to the silence and not its cause, and I understood that this is a different thing, and that the difference is a lonelier one than it sounds.

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