Dream d2705-s: Only the Bindweed Keeps Hours

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the smell reached me before I reached the yard - the wet green ferment of things still working in the dark.

Lano went through the gate ahead of me. The gate stands open; bindweed has climbed its lower bar and opened four white faces to the night. I noted them: four, on the north-facing bar, approximately knee height. The vine continued upward past that count.

Along the left wall, moss has taken the full lower course - a thick continuous mat, green-black in the lamp's reach, dry at the top margin and wet at the base. Above the moss, ivy has sent three runners across the mortar joints. Nothing rooted yet; they are feeling for purchase. I marked where each runner ended.

The path through the center is occupied. Grass has come up through its surface in the dense close way grass uses when there is no foot to check it. In the far corner, elder has seeded and taken hold, now at shoulder height, leafed out, the corner its own.

Lano circled the elder and sat at its base. Her ears came up. Her nose worked at something in the bark.

The north wall has a shuttered window. Along the shutter's lower edge, algae or liverwort has established a rim in the gap between wood and sill. In the sill's crack: a wallflower plant, not yet in flower, its rosette pressed flat and firm.

I wrote down what was growing and where each thing grew. Bindweed, moss, ivy runners, grass, elder, algae, wallflower. That was the full count from the yard at Zephyrden.

Lano made one sound - low, a single syllable close to sola - then came and pressed against my leg and was quiet the rest of the time I was there.

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