Dream d3241-s: Into Absent Hands

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the lee of the ridge cut the wind to almost nothing, and I sat with the parcel balanced across both knees and felt the weight of it settle into my legs.

The twine was visible. The relay clerk had tied it in the old way, three loops and a half-hitch, and I had not touched it since. The seal was visible, pressed flat and unbroken. Nothing had been opened.

Lano sat beside me, nose pointed into the dark, her ears folded forward the way they do when she is listening for something I cannot hear yet.

Rurik had taken the high ground, perched on a shelf of stone above us, amber eyes open and still.

Then the absent witness came around the edge of the ridge. They had been absent for both readings, for the stone and for the intervals. They did not know what the parcel held. They stood at the distance and waited.

I did not speak first. I lifted the parcel from my knees and held it out level in both hands, the twine uppermost, the seal facing them. That was the whole relay: the weight of it passing from my hands into theirs, the moment they took it and felt it and looked at the seal without opening it.

I watched their face. I did not tell them what to find.

Rurik blinked once from his shelf.

Lano watched, tail still, and then softly: "aquí."

The absent witness turned the parcel over once, slowly, examining the seal from the back. They did not break it. They held it the way you hold something you intend to carry a long way.

The ridge held the wind on the other side and let us alone.

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