Dream d3258-s: Bundles Left to Dry

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the reed yard smelled of something green giving up its water. The keeper moved along the bank with her blade low, each cut coming up clean, and behind her the reeds lay flat in loose rows waiting to be gathered. The lamp she had set on the shed ledge threw its amber wide enough to work by; beyond that, the water was dark and the ferry sat without motion at the landing.

Lano stayed near the stacks, pressing her nose to each bound sheaf as it was set down. The cut ends were still wet. She sneezed once, then settled, watching.

The relay clerk sat on an overturned crate at the yard's edge and wrote. The surveyor had paced the row of drying stacks once, then stopped, content with the count. Neither the keeper nor the surveyor acknowledged each other. The work was older than their meeting here, and both seemed to know it.

I had stood in this yard before. The ferry roof had been solid then, moss-thick and firm at the corners. Now the keeper was building it again from cut lengths, which meant something had gone through or given way, and the answer was exactly this: blade, bundle, stack, dry. I did not mark the difference in words. I marked it by standing in the yard again and knowing the number of my visits.

Lano circled toward me and sat at my knee. Her coat was damp from the bank grass. The distant reader stood near the shed wall, within the amber edge of the lamplight but apart from the work, face turned toward the water. No word traveled out from that position, and the keeper did not look up from her cutting.

The stacks grew taller against the shed wall. The keeper's rhythm did not change. When the lamp began to gutter, she moved it to the other post and continued. The reeds would be dry by morning, or the morning after. This is the way of the yard.

---