Dream d3242-s: Still Air, Then Birds

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the relay clerk had folded both accounts into a single sleeve and given it to me at the trailhead before dawn, saying nothing about what either contained. I carried it through Galehollow's northern corridors, past the terraced stone walls and the silent cistern, to the descent gate where the absent witness stood waiting on the downward side.

Lano had already gone through. She sat beyond the gate with the open sky above her, ears up, nose reading something I could not see. Small and white and entirely still.

Rurik had come as far as the gatepost. He sat in the gap between gate and stone and would go no further. He stared at the absent witness with that long amber stare, tail wrapped around his feet, saying nothing, as he never does.

The wind stopped. Not dropping off - a full stop, the air asked to stand aside. And in that stillness the birds started: two points below the descent path, calling back and forth, not from the summit behind me, not from the trees above, but from somewhere already further down.

I handed the sleeve across.

The absent witness opened it without urgency. First account: dated stone entries, the surveyor's signed attestations of what had stood and what had not. Second account: nine residencies, ninety moments, two dated voices moving through the same span without either one erasing the other.

I watched the absent witness read. I had been asked not to interpret, not to summarise, not to decide. I found I could hold that. The record was where it was meant to be. There was nothing left to add to it.

Lano's tail moved once, slow. She made a sound low in her throat: aquí. Not for anyone. Just what the place was.

Rurik blinked his slow amber blink and did not move.

I did not look back at the summit. What was behind me had been accounted for by those who could account for it. I stepped through the gate and the birds went on calling, down into Galehollow's lower reaches, and the sky was the kind of open that makes everything beneath it exactly the right size.

---

Artwork instructions

IMAGE: pixel art a wooden gate at the top of a descending path, a human figure passing through it, a dog already on the far side, open sky above, {}8-bit style