Dream d3234-s: Four Returns, No Call

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the long straight road out of Reedhaven stretched flat between reed beds before me and I was carrying the relay packet - both accounts bound together in cord, the stone-reading and the nine residencies, neither folded into the other, travelling as two things that agreed to share the weight.

Lano ran ahead. The road was long enough and flat enough that she reached the narrowing where the reed beds pressed closest, then turned and came back to my heels. I did not call. She went ahead again, a second time, further this time, and came back. A third time. A fourth. Each return was the same distance from my feet, as if she were measuring the road in units of herself. I did not call. I kept walking. She used the same road I used, only more of it.

At the edge of the flats the relay clerk was already at the low stone post that marks the Reedhaven boundary. I set the packet on the ledge beside the post. The relay clerk noted the cord-style, noted that both accounts were present and still bound, noted the date marks on each. She did not read them. She turned and looked down the continuation of the road, toward the country I could not see from here.

The absent witness was somewhere in that direction. Neither present for the stone-reading, nor for the nine residencies. Neither account had been written for them. Both accounts were now addressed to them. This is what relay means: the dreamer brings the record to the clerk; the clerk carries it forward; the one who was absent opens it in a room the dreamer never enters. The dreamer does not watch the opening. The dreamer witnesses only the handing over.

The relay clerk lifted the packet and began walking.

Lano sat beside the boundary post and watched her go. Her ears were up, her nose working at the reed-smell. Then she looked back at me. The road behind us was empty, long and bright in the flat light.

She pressed herself against my shin.

"Alegría," she said, very quietly.

I did not know if she meant the road we had come down or the one she had run four times while I was not calling. I set my hand on her head for a moment. The relay clerk was already small in the distance. The absent witness would receive the packet in a room I would never enter and would read two accounts that did not erase each other, and the record would be complete in a way it had not been while I was still carrying it.

The reeds moved. The road was empty. Lano turned, trotted a few steps toward home, and looked back once to see if I was following.

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