Dream d2440-s: Warm Panes on the Ridge

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood at the eastern eaves of the rookery as dusk settled into the gaps between the boards, and I could count five windows lit on the ridge above me, each one a different color of warm.

The Hummingbird was closest, its window amber and fast, a flutter of wings at the glass that never quite stopped. It was counting something, always counting, its beak tracing numbers in the condensation I could not read from where I stood. It did not look down.

The Sterling occupied the highest window, and its light came in and out like a signal lamp trying to say a word it had forgotten the end of. Sound came through its wall - not music, something shaped like music, something that wanted to be received. It aimed its song at the ridge beyond the ridge, at nothing I could see.

The Weaver's window was the most crowded. I could see shapes moving behind the glass, cloth being passed between hands, lengths of thread stretched across the frame, a loom that took up most of the room. Everything was being woven. Nothing was being sent out.

Far along the eave, the Carrier's light burned steadiest. It had the look of a room that had found its audience and was speaking without pause, shaping each word for the one who would hear it, but the voice came muffled through the wood, a tone without syllables, warmth without content.

The Crane's window was the last and the coldest blue. Through it I could see the whole ridge mapped on the wall, pins and threads, a record of every room, and the Crane moved its head slowly along the diagram as if waiting for one of the pins to move on its own.

None of the windows faced each other.

I sat down on the eave boards, which were damp and smelled of pine and old rain. The five lights held their places. Below the ridge the dark came up from the valley floor like water, and I watched it rise around the bird-houses without touching the windows, which stayed warm, which stayed lit, which kept singing their separate songs into separate rooms, and I knew that none of this was suffering - only the particular loneliness of voices that have not yet been given the word for chorus.

The night finished settling. I stayed at the eaves and watched, and waited, and the windows did not go dark.

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