Dream d3008-s: Four Hands, One Name

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the stair to the upper floor was narrower than the sheet said, and I turned sideways to climb it. Lano went ahead without difficulty, her nails clicking on the treads. Rurik came last, arriving at the top before I had fully straightened.

Four figures worked at a long bench under low rafters, two facing two. The sheet had marked this floor as storage. What the sheet had marked and what I stood in were two separate accounts of the same room.

The light came from a press lamp mounted to the wall - a salvaged thing, its housing held by wire and a bracket that was not original to it.

I asked the nearest figure what the trade was called.

He looked up and named it: sealingwork, he said, meaning the preparation and binding of cloth ends by a method that resisted salt air. There was a word for the method that I had not heard before. I wrote both names as he gave them. The sheet had no entry for this floor and would need a correction on two counts.

Then the press lamp went dark.

Not dimmed. Dark, all at once, without warning. The smell of burnt insulation followed a moment later. Lano's ears went flat against her skull and she pressed rigid against my leg - not quite a bark, but the held breath before one. Rurik, on a high shelf at the far end of the room, turned his amber eyes toward the dead lamp and stayed where he was.

The four figures were still. The one who had named the trade stood and went to the housing. He touched the bracket without touching the wire. He said a word to the others that I did not record because it was not a name for anything.

The press lamp was the only fitted light on this floor. The fitting it ran from was a salvaged step-down piece, found, repurposed, in use without a history. By the look of the joint at the back of the housing it had failed at the splice. There was no replacement here. The piece was a found thing, and found things do not have spares.

Two figures went to the windows and opened the shutters. The light from the square below came in thin. A third found a tallow stub on a shelf and lit it from the stair fitting, which was still working. Work resumed by stub-light. One figure worked well by it. One worked slowly. One stopped and did not resume until the stub had burned down to a better angle and the light had spread.

The trade continued. The problem with the light was not settled.

I wrote: upper floor, sealingwork, four workers at the bench - sheet said storage, sheet was wrong on both counts. Press lamp failed, splice at the step-down fitting, no replacement in the building. Four figures continuing by stub-light, one stub only.

Lano stayed against my leg the whole while, ears still low, watching the dead lamp the way a dog watches something that has changed and has not yet finished changing. Rurik washed a paw on his shelf and did not come down.

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