Dream d3206-s: Between One Hand and the Next

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the wooden gate at Palewick's northern edge stood latched but not locked, and the surveyor waited on the field side with a parcel wrapped in grey linen, twine knotted at each corner.

Lano sat in the grass to my left, ears forward, watching the gate without moving. The morning was cold and the field smelled of wet earth and something older, stone and standing water.

The absent witness came along the hedge-path from the opposite direction. I had not seen them approach. They were there, and then they were closer, and then they stood on the road side of the gate.

The surveyor did not speak before releasing the parcel. Both hands lifted it over the top bar and the absent witness received it with both hands, palms up. The transfer was quick. There was no ceremony in it. The parcel sat for a moment cradled in those careful hands - held level, not clutched - and the absent witness turned it once, checking the knots, feeling the corners.

I did not say what was inside. I did not need to. Two accounts, each dated and signed, travelling together since the nine residencies, neither erasing the other. The absent witness had not been present for either reading. That was the whole point of carrying it here.

Rurik appeared on the upper rail of the gate - I did not see him arrive - sitting with amber eyes fixed on the parcel. He blinked once, slowly, and did not move again.

The absent witness lowered the parcel and tucked it under one arm. They looked across at the surveyor, who had already stepped back into the field grass without waiting to be thanked.

Lano watched until the absent witness had gone twenty paces down the hedge-path, then turned her nose toward the gate latch and sniffed it twice.

The surveyor walked back toward Palewick. I followed. Nothing had been explained. Nothing needed to be.

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