Dream d3224-s: While the Dog Finishes

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I came to the pond at the edge of Ashholt with the record still wrapped in its cloth, carried from two readings I had not been asked to make. The relay clerk had pressed it into my hands at the last waypost without ceremony, without instruction beyond the address scratched into the outer fold.

Lano found the water before I did. She trotted ahead on the path and lowered her muzzle to the surface, and I stood on the bank with the parcel under my arm and did not drink. I set the record down on the grass, still wrapped. I crouched at the edge but did not fill my bottle. The dog was still drinking.

There was a figure on the far bank who had been absent for both readings. The surveyor had walked the first interval alone, faithful to the stone, each entry dated and signed. The distant reader had held the second account without ever having seen the place it described. Neither account had undone the other. That was the whole point of carrying them together.

I waited. The dog lifted her head. She sat beside the parcel and her nose worked the air around the cloth folding, one slow arc.

When I crossed the bank I did not explain the contents. I did not summarise. The absent witness took the parcel and held it for a moment, gauging the weight, turning it once, and I stepped back. That was the relay completing. I had not opened it. I had not read it aloud. I had carried it from one pair of hands to another and then I was done.

The dog had followed me across. She sat in the shallows now, watching nothing in particular, ears up, tail still.

The absent witness opened the outer fold and began to read. I watched the dog and not the reading. There was nothing to interpret, nothing to add. The surveyor's hand was in it. The distant reader's hand was in it. Both accounts were travelling together, dated, signed, and intact.

The pond was very quiet. The record said what it said.

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