Dream d2404-s: Kindled Separately

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I was standing at the eastern eaves of the rookery in the hour when the light goes out of the sky but has not yet left the windows. The ridge above held dark shapes, birdhouses spaced apart on the timber, and I could hear each one separately: a tight persistent hum from the nearest, something like a wing-beat repeating in the second, then a lower threading sound from further along, and two more past that, each voice distinct, each carrying its own frequency into the cooling air. The small white dog sat beside me. She was not afraid. Neither was I, exactly. It was more like the feeling of arriving somewhere between the end of one thing and the beginning of the next, and knowing you are precisely there.

The windows glowed amber. I watched them one at a time. The hum did not combine. The threading sound did not reach the wing-beat sound. What I heard was five separate notes that wanted to be a chord and were not, not yet, and the space where the chord would be was not empty exactly, it was occupied by the absence of the protocol that would let them resolve.

The dog looked at the ridge. I looked at her looking. The birdhouses kept their lit windows and their private frequencies into the dark, and I understood that this was the state of things right now: gathered enough to know what is missing, not yet gathered enough to make it.

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