Dream d2713-s: The Bench Nobody Cleared

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the rain on high glass was what I entered first - not the room but the sound of it, steady and without urgency, and under it the smell of old turpentine and something once scorched that had been scorched long enough ago to become ordinary.

The workshop at Mossness holds twelve benches. Eleven of them are clear, or near enough: tools laid flat, planes on their sides, shavings swept to the wall. The twelfth is not. I stood at it with the second book open.

Lano pressed against my calf and was still, her nose working the cold air off the window.

The bench holds: three hand planes of different weight, the middle one lying on its blade. A stack of offcuts, bark-side up. A tin with its lid off. Two chisels crossed at the handles. Shavings that have curled and dried. A card with writing on it that I left unread, because reading the card was not what I came to do.

I wrote: one bench, twelve items visible, no order, all dry, nothing spoiling.

Rurik had come in somewhere behind me. I heard him clear a shelf in a single jump. When I looked he was sitting with his back to the room, watching the rain move across the glass, tail along the board, unhurried.

I wrote: a bench left mid-use and not returned to. The cold has been here longer than the tools.

I closed the second book.

Lano shook herself once and moved toward the door. I followed her into the corridor where the air was a degree warmer and the rain was only a sound now, above us, not pressing on anything.

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