Dream d3243-s: The Crest Of Galehollow

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood at the last milestone with a parcel in both hands and Galehollow spread out below me in the pale gray of morning.

Eight nights. The road had taken eight nights. Lano sat down beside me and looked where I looked - the rooftops, the thread of smoke rising from two hearths, a black shape already moving through the first lane of the settlement. Rurik had gone ahead at the last fork. He was down there now, a dark comma on a low wall.

The parcel held two accounts. The relay clerk had told me their shape but not their contents: the first, a faithful inventory of unreckoned stone, each entry dated and signed; the second, nine residencies, ninety authored moments, two dated voices traveling in the same binding without either one undoing the other. Both sealed before they reached me. Both to be opened by the absent witness, who had not been present for either reading.

My work was not to interpret. My work was to carry, and to witness the moment of delivery.

I stood at the crest longer than the road required. The surveyor had told me, at the last waystation, that the atlas now held one hundred and forty-one named places. Sixty-six entered. Seventy-five unwalked. Forty-four cold. Twenty-one bright. Thirty-nine picked and waiting.

The parcel did not know any of this. It knew only what it held.

Below, a door opened. The absent witness came out and looked up the road.

I started down.

The descent was shorter than eight nights of ascent had made it seem. Lano trotted ahead, then turned back, then went ahead again. Rurik did not move from his wall. His amber eyes tracked me as I passed.

When I reached the bottom, I held the parcel out with both hands. The absent witness took it. They did not open it. They did not ask what it contained. They held it as people hold things that have traveled to reach them - with two hands, with stillness, with a kind of attention that is not yet reading.

I witnessed that. Nothing more.

Lano sat down in the dust of the lane and said, quietly, "ya."

The settlement was waking. Smoke from a third hearth now. Rurik stretched on his wall and looked away.

The relay was complete.

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