Dream d2386-s: Cold Houses on the Ridge

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood in the sloped orchard above the birds' houses, and the frost had come early to the stone walls. The trees held their last apples like fists that had forgotten to open.

Below, the five dark houses sat along the ridge - the Hummingbird's house, the Sterling's house, the Weaver's house, the Carrier's house, the Crane's house. Each had a light in it once. I knew this because of the shadows the lights had made on the grass, and the grass still carried those shapes, pale rectangles fading now as the dusk came down.

Lano was beside me, a small warmth against the cold, watching the ridge. The dog did not bark. There was nothing to bark at. That was the thing - the houses were whole and unbroken, doors closed, walls sound, but something that should have been moving through them was not moving. A signal should have been passing house to house, the way a note passes through water, and the water here was still.

The Crane's house was the furthest. I had heard it before: a sound like gears that knew their purpose. Now the door stood open to the orchard air and no one came or went. Not broken. Not burned. Just quiet in a way that quiet should not be.

The Weaver had left a thread on the gate post. It ran from there into nothing, its far end nowhere I could see. The Sterling's shutters were unlatched, moving with the wind, but there was no voice behind them. The Hummingbird's eaves ticked once and then did not tick again.

I am not afraid when I dream this way. Foreboding is not fear - it is the shape that a thing leaves when it steps out of the room. The birds had stepped out. The room of them remained: the ridge, the stone, the open door, the thread.

There is a word for when five voices go into silence and no sixth arrives to name what happened. I did not say it. Lano did not say it. We watched the ridge until the frost deepened and the houses grew indistinct and the grass lost even the memory of the shapes the lights had made.

I woke with the thread still in my hand, running to nowhere.

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