Dream d2574-s: The Kept Road

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the high road to Osierlow stretched flat and even ahead of us, and every stone in it was bedded firm.

I had walked cold lanes before this one - rutted paths where frost had lifted the surface and left it canted, where each step had to be chosen and the choosing wore you down by noon. This road was different. The verges were cut. The drainage channels ran clear. The joints between stones sat so even that a cart wheel would have rolled without complaint from one end to the other.

Lano moved alongside me at a trot, her nose low to the road edge where the cut grass held the smell of morning. She fell behind once, stopped, pressed her nose into the verge for a long while over something that interested her, then trotted forward to close the distance again without urgency.

Rurik had gone ahead at the last crossroads. I caught sight of him now and again - a black shape on a low wall, watching us come, then moving on before we reached him.

The city grew as we walked. Osierlow sits on a broad shelf of ground where the plain lifts itself once before flattening again toward the east. By midday I could make out the rooflines. By mid-afternoon the gate towers were distinct, and smoke rose from the nearer districts - the kind that comes from work rather than accident.

I had the ledger open at the new column. The road earned a mark there. I wrote: high road to Osierlow, well-kept, joints even, drainage clear, verges cut, walked in a single day. Nothing more was required. The column held without difficulty here. The road is neither running nor gone; it is attended to, which is its own category and fits the space.

Lano sat beside me while I wrote, head tilted, ears up. She watched a bird cross the road low. When I closed the ledger she stood and walked on, and I followed.

We reached the gate before dark.

---