Dream d3239-s: What The Dog Chose

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the scree began just past the last firm ground, and Lano was already on it, her small white form moving forward with her nose down, testing each flat piece before she committed her weight. I watched where her paws went. That was the instruction: watch where the paws go.

I had the parcel held against my chest with both arms, the way you carry something that cannot be set down until you reach the person it is meant for. Inside it, bound together, were two accounts. The first was a record of objects, each entered on its own dated page by the surveyor, each signed. The second was a record of intervals, nine residencies and the moments authored inside them, two dates riding alongside each other without cancelling each other out. Neither account had been opened since they were sealed. That was also the instruction: not to open, not to interpret.

Lano paused on a wider shelf of grey rock. Her ears lifted. She looked back at me once, then forward, then moved left along the shelf before stepping down onto the next band of loose slate. I followed the same line, angling left, feeling the rock settle under my boot and then hold. Behind me, Galehollow's lower rooftops were visible through the morning haze, the pale chalk of the surveyor's office among them.

The absent witness was somewhere above. I did not know them by face. The relay clerk had given me a location: a low building at the top of the scree field, a door that opened inward. The clerk had said only that the witness had not been present for either reading, and that the record should reach them in the state it was made, not the state I had made of it since.

Lano moved without hesitation now, choosing each step the way water finds the easiest course, and I followed three steps behind with my arms tight around the parcel and my eyes on her small white shoulders.

When we reached the top, she sat down by the door and her tail moved once against the ground. The door was already open by the width of a hand. I stepped through, and the absent witness was at a table near the back wall, not yet looking up. I set the parcel down in front of them. I said: there are two accounts inside. I was present for both. I have not added anything.

The witness looked at the parcel. They did not open it immediately. That was their right.

Outside, Lano waited on the threshold. Rurik was somewhere on the roof. I heard him shift his weight above us, then nothing.

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