Dream d2579-s: Stones at Each Corner

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the lane ran level between two hamlets, each facing away from the other, and Lano walked ahead with her nose low to the gravel.

The first hamlet was on the left. I went in at the gap in the hedge and found every door latched and every shutter down. In the yard of the third cottage stood a stack of cut wood against the wall, covered with a board. Whoever had placed the board had weighted its four corners with stones before leaving. I noted this in the ledger under the new column. Lano circled the yard once, pressed her nose to the base of the stack, and then sat in the lane to wait.

The lane between the two hamlets took perhaps twenty minutes on foot. The ground was frozen but not broken. Whatever cart had last used it had used it in dry weather, or something close to dry. No ruts.

The second hamlet was smaller. A grain store with its door pegged shut from the outside. A trough, empty and upright. Three wells, all capped. I went around the perimeter of each building and wrote the state of its shutters and threshold in the ledger. One threshold had a flat stone set flush into the frozen mud beside it. Not an accident. I recorded it and moved on.

Rurik had found his way there by the time I reached the last building. He was sitting in a low window on the east side, watching the lane. He blinked once when I passed.

The walk back was the same twenty minutes. Lano pressed close to my left leg as the lane narrowed near the hedge. I carried the ledger under my arm. Both hamlets held the new column without difficulty. Neither had a thing in it that anyone had put down fast.

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