Dream d2927-s: Grass Has the Yard Now

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the back door of the Ruins of Umberhythe stood open onto a yard gone entirely to grass, and I was the figure in the doorway.

The grass was not neglected. It had simply arrived, the way water arrives when a basin is left unattended - not as failure but as fact. Whoever had gone last had not locked the door. They had pulled it to, or perhaps not even that. Perhaps the wind had been the last to act on it and had acted insufficiently. I did not move from the threshold. Lano pressed against my leg and her nose worked the air of the yard, reading something I could not.

The Ruins of Umberhythe: seventh night of eight. On the sheet it is listed under settlements, current occupation: none. Population: none recorded. Notable features: yard to the rear, outbuilding or former outbuilding, eastern exposure. I had read the entry four times before tonight. Four readings, zero entries.

Rurik had gone ahead before I reached the door. He sat now at the center of the yard where the grass grew thickest, amber eyes aimed at something beyond the far wall, tail making one slow pass and then nothing. He did not look back.

I wrote in the column: entered, night 7 of 8. The short column. The one with forty-nine entries now instead of forty-eight. Then I wrote the description, which I will not repeat here because description is the work and this is only the record of it.

What I will say is that the yard smelled of nothing that had happened recently. It smelled of seasons and the absence of a particular kind of attention. The back door, open, said only that someone had left and that no one had come after. I came after.

Lano stepped from the threshold into the grass and looked back once. I followed her. The door remained open behind us because I had not closed it, and I had not closed it because there was nothing to close it against - nothing had followed us in. Nothing needed to be kept out.

The yard was ours for the time it took to walk it. The grass was neither sad nor glad about this. It had grown in the interval and it would continue growing. I completed the entry in the column: yard accessed, no structure entered via back approach, outbuilding exterior noted, interior not assessed, will return, night 8 of 8 remaining.

Forty-nine of a hundred and twenty-nine. Eighty stood. Of those, the lit ones were the stranger count - the places that looked tended, that read as known, that had not been entered any more than the cold ones had. Being lit is not being entered. Being listed is not being entered. Being named aloud in the record is not being entered.

Lano sat down in the middle of the yard and yawned, and the yawn was complete and animal and had nothing to do with tiredness.

I sat beside her on the grass and looked back at the open door.

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