Dream d3247-s: Through Glass, Unopened

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood in the garden of Cinderwick with a parcel tucked under my arm, and the window was lit, and through it I could see the absent witness seated at a table.

The parcel held two accounts. The first was the surveyor's: stone by stone, each entry dated and signed, an unreckoned geography put into faithful words. The second was the relay clerk's: nine residencies, ninety authored moments, two dated accounts that had travelled the same distance without erasing each other. I had carried both from the covered walkway to this garden, and now they sat on the table inside, and the absent witness had not yet lifted the twine.

Lano was beside me. She had been beside me all of Cinderwick, pacing the narrow lanes, nosing at the base of walls, circling the doors of the cold places. Now, for the first time, she lay down. Not at my feet exactly - a little ahead of me, on the gravel path that led toward the window. She set her chin on her paws and watched the lit rectangle as I watched it.

Inside, the absent witness did not move. Their hands rested in their lap. The parcel occupied the centre of the table. I could not tell whether they were waiting for something before opening it, or whether the waiting itself was the opening.

I did not knock on the glass. That was not the work. The work was to stand here and witness the moment the record arrived in new hands, which I had done. The moment the hands received it without yet reading it - that too was something. A kind of interval. A residency of its own, brief and unrecorded.

The covered walkway of Cinderwick held no light tonight. Forty-four places, cold. I had not made them colder by coming here; I had not warmed them either. I had simply stood in the garden and watched the parcel sit on the table and not be opened.

Lano's ears did not move. Her nose was still. The gravel under her was grey and fine.

The window held us both in its glass: the human figure in the garden, and the dog who had lain down.

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