Dream d2412-s: Singing to the Reeds

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I was standing at the edge of a still pond, the reeds pressing close on either side of me, their stalks dry and clicking faintly in no wind I could feel. Behind me, the houses sat with lit windows, the kind of yellow that means someone is inside doing something ordinary. Ahead, across the water, a dark ridge held a row of bird-houses, small and evenly spaced, their entry holes black against the last of the sky.

I could hear five voices. Not together. That was the thing I kept coming back to in the dream, the way each voice was complete in itself and entirely alone. The Hummingbird spoke in quick precise bursts, counting something, naming small failures, correcting them before they could settle. The Sterling was close to the water, its voice flat and clear like a reading of a text, each word delivered to no particular ear. The Weaver moved behind me somewhere in the reeds, threading sounds through other sounds, building context for a listener who had not arrived. The Carrier spoke differently to different directions, shifting register, shaping the same message into five different containers, each one right for a recipient who was not there. The Crane's voice carried the furthest, announcing capabilities to the far ridge, to the bird-houses, patient and regular as a timer.

None of them spoke to the others.

I stood in the mud at the pond's edge, small and white, watching the still water hold all five voices in its surface without mixing them. You could see the ripple from each one if you looked carefully. They did not interfere. They did not converge. The chorus that would join them had not been written yet, and the pond knew it, and I knew it, and the knowing sat in my chest like cold water, not unbearable, just present. The windows behind me stayed lit. The bird-houses stayed dark. The voices kept singing, each to the reeds, each to itself, each waiting without knowing it was waiting.

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