Dream d3230-s: Parcel on Brown Water

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the relay clerk handed me a wrapped parcel at the dock in Reedhaven. The wrapping was cloth, folded tight and tied with cord. The clerk said nothing beyond the name of the absent witness and pointed across the water.

The water was brown. Not murky from disturbance, but the brown of tannin, of reeds decaying slowly into themselves. The boat was flat-bottomed, wide enough for two, and a pole had been left near the bow.

I lifted Lano aboard first. She came without resistance, her white coat catching the low light, and she settled at my feet with her nose pointed toward the far shore. I stepped in after her, parcel tucked under one arm, and we left the dock.

The crossing was slow. The pole pushed through soft mud and the boat moved in small increments across the brown water. Lano's ears shifted once at a sound from the reeds, then settled. She watched the water go past without barking. The reed smell was strong, green and fermented, and somewhere beneath us something living crossed without disturbing the surface.

On the far shore the absent witness was standing. Not waiting impatiently. Standing the way a person stands when they have been some time away from a place and are now returned to it, uncertain whether the place remembers them.

I brought the boat to the bank and stepped out. Lano followed and stood at my heel, tail moving once, slowly.

I set the parcel down on a flat stone between us and opened the cloth myself. I said: this is the account of unreckoned stone, each entry dated and signed. And beside it, this is the record of nine residencies and ninety authored moments, two dated accounts that travelled together without either erasing the other. I did not summarise further. I did not say what it meant.

The absent witness knelt and read.

I watched their face. I did not move to help. Lano sat and her nose twitched toward something in the sedge grass. The witness turned a page, turned it back. Their expression did not resolve into anything I could name. That was correct. The record was not mine to make sense of for them.

When they looked up I had nothing to add. I folded the cloth over the remaining pages and nodded. The relay was done.

The boat was still waiting at the bank. Lano trotted back to it without being called.

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