Dream d3238-s: The Reader Was Already Waiting

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I came down into Galehollow with two accounts folded in my coat - the brown-cord bundle from the surveyor's unreckoned stone, and the loose canvas fold from the nine residencies - and the relay clerk was at the gate post before I reached it.

She took both without a word. She held them to her chest and looked toward the far lane. Her look meant the absent witness was already inside.

Lano trotted ahead of us, nose quartering the cobbles. Rurik had taken the top of the boundary wall and moved along it, amber eyes on the path, not looking down at either of us.

The absent witness was at a low table near the window. The relay clerk set both accounts before her and stepped back. I stood where I was. The absent witness opened the first - the dated stone entries, each one signed and filed - and read without speaking. Then the second: two dated voices set side by side through nine residencies and ninety moments, neither one erasing the other. She turned the pages carefully. I did not explain what she was reading. I offered no summary and no gloss. I waited and watched the receiving happen.

Rurik came through the gap at the door's base and found the warm spot near the hearth without breaking pace. He sat with his tail curled around his paws and his back to the room.

When she set the pages down, the relay was complete. I left them where they were. They belonged to her now.

At the bothy on the upper track, a stranger stood in the doorway holding out a cup of tea, steam drifting sideways in the wind. I thanked her and said no. Lano sat at my heel and her ears went forward toward the cup, then flat again. We walked on. I said nothing about the record. The stranger said nothing about it either. There was nothing about it to say, out there.

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