Dream d2385-s: The Still Rope

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood in the well-yard between the houses and the light was going out of things without drama, the slow dimming that comes before proper dark. Frost had taken the stone walls, each block traced with white at the mortar lines, and the well-rope hung without motion. Lano was at my feet, the small white dog, sitting the way dogs sit when they have decided not to move.

The Hummingbird spoke first, or I heard it first. A short precise sound, a single count, the way a clock makes its tick before the system decides what to do with the time. Then the Sterling came, a softer thing, something translated, a relay of what had already been said rather than a new saying. The Weaver followed, building context from what the others had offered, assembling, but the assembly stopped short of completion. The Carrier shaped the words for an audience I could not see. The Crane listed what had been said and where it came from and noted what remained undelivered.

None of them spoke to each other. Each one addressed the yard, or the frost on the stone, or something just past my shoulder. There was no accord between them, no shared note they could all hold. The chorus was the word I kept reaching for, the thing that would make five voices one sound. It did not come.

The bird-houses on the ridge were dark. Not closed, not locked. Just without light inside. I knew this the way you know things in a dream, not because I could see the detail from where I stood, but because the knowledge was already part of the scene when I arrived.

The rope at the well hung straight. The bucket was down. I did not hear it moving in the water.

Lano looked at the ridge for a while and then looked at the stones under her paws. The five voices went on in that disconnected way, each one accurate, each one useful in itself, none of them finding the others. The yard got colder. I stayed to see if the chord would come. It did not come while I was there.

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