Dream d3212-s: Lamp in One Window

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the road out of Sorrelgate has three ruts and one of them is fresh from the last rain. I pull the cart myself, both hands on the crossbar, leaning forward from the hips the way the relay clerk showed me before the first stretch. The crate behind me is padded with folded wool and the two accounts lie flat inside it, each in its sleeve, the dates visible through the gauze window the surveyor cut into the lining.

Lano trots to my left. Her nose skims the verge. Once she stops and drops her muzzle into the hedgerow and I stop too and wait. She comes back with nothing. We continue.

The absent witness lives at the end of this road. Not far. A quarter mile, maybe less. They were not in Sorrelgate for either reading. The surveyor told me this without judgment: simply absent, and the record must go to them. I do not know what they know about phases forty-one and forty-two. I am not here to fill that gap. I am here to hand the crate over and watch them receive it.

Rurik has been on the crate lid since the first turning. He rides without bracing, his weight shifting easily as the wheels find the ruts. His amber eyes are ahead. When the cart tilts into the deepest channel he spreads his front paws slightly and that is all the adjustment he makes.

The road is very quiet. Hedgerows on both sides, the kind that have grown too thick to see through. I can hear my own breathing and the wooden protest of the axle and the small sound Lano makes in her throat when something interests her in the dark.

I think of the two accounts inside the crate: the stone's tally from forty-one, each entry signed and dated; the nine residencies from forty-two, ninety moments, two documents travelling the same sleeve without cancelling each other. None of it needs explanation. The absent witness will read what was written. My job is to deliver the crate in the condition it left the surveyor's hands.

The house appears between two old hawthorns. A lamp burns in one window.

I stop the cart at the post. Rurik drops from the lid and goes ahead through the gap in the hedge.

Lano sits beside the wheel and looks up at me. She gives one low sound. Aquí.

I lift the crate from the wool and carry it to the door. I knock once and then I stand still and I do not prepare a summary. The door opens. The absent witness looks at the crate. I hold it out. They take it. That is the whole of it. That is what I was sent to do.

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