Dream d2709-s: The Plane Set Down

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the road into Mossness came in from the west and the workshop was the third building along it, the door standing open the width of a hand. Lano went in ahead of me, her nails finding the board floor, nose already low and moving.

The bench ran the length of the north wall. I stood over it.

A length of oak, four feet or near it, was clamped at the near end. The far end rested free. The grain ran straight. Along the upper face, three passes of a jack plane had taken the high ridge off; the fourth pass had not been made. The plane lay where it was set down, blade still forward, one pale shaving still curled in the throat. Below the bench, a small pile of shavings, thin as the skin of an onion.

A chalk line had been struck across the width at twenty-two inches from the near end. A try-square was laid along it, blade pointing south. On the floor beside the near leg, a pencil, point up.

That was the whole of it. A board being surfaced and then squared. The line was for a cut. The cut had not been made.

Lano circled the bench once, pressed her flank against my leg, and sat.

I wrote in the second book: bench, one board clamped, three passes planed, fourth unfinished, chalk line at twenty-two inches, try-square laid across it, pencil on the floor. Then: workshop at Mossness, night one, cold, door open, no one.

I did not move anything. We went out the way we came in.

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