Dream d3254-s: Clean Desk, Dry Ink

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the loft smelled of old pine and the cold wick of a lamp that had been burning until recently. I climbed the last step and set my palm on the railing. The boards were steady underfoot.

The desk was clear. Last time there had been paper, three sheets, the corner of a blotter held down by a small river stone. The stone was gone. The blotter was gone. The surface was bare wood, pale at the center where something had protected it from the fading on the edges.

The inkwell sat in its holder beside the window. I pressed a finger to the rim. Dry. The last time I touched that inkwell it left a faint blue ring on my forefinger that lasted two days.

Lano padded up behind me and sat at the edge of the rug. Her nose moved once, twice, tracking something I could not name.

The keeper came in from a side room carrying a cloth folded over one arm. She went to the window and adjusted the curtain so the draft from the garden came in rather than the dust from the road. She did not speak.

I sat in the chair. The wood held me the same as it had held me before. The surveyor was at the landing below, I could hear the creak of the exterior stair under his boots and the soft knock of his satchel against the wall.

The relay clerk was not here. That was the right condition. There was nothing to relay.

The dog came and lay down beside the desk leg. She set her chin on her paws and looked up at me. Her tail moved once.

I looked at the window. The light came in over the garden wall and crossed the floor in a band about two hands wide. The band now touched only the floor, not the papers I had spread across the desk. The papers were elsewhere. Reading was happening somewhere else, or had already happened. I did not follow it.

The keeper finished with the curtain and left. The surveyor came up to the landing and stopped there. I heard his pen scratch, heard him descend again.

The desk was clear. The inkwell was dry. The dog breathed slowly against the desk leg.

"Aqui," she said once, very low, and then was quiet.

I stayed in the chair until the light had moved off the floor entirely and the lamp needed tending. I tended it. The wick caught. The loft was as it had been.

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