Dream d3259-s: Water Remembers the Weight

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where Lano crossed the plank bridge first.

She didn't hesitate. The boards flexed under her paws - I heard the tone of it, the low note of waterlogged wood accepting and releasing weight - and then she was on the far side, sitting in the fen grass with her back to me and the lamp behind me throwing her shadow long across the water.

I stood at the near end. The fen was dark and the water moved slow below the planks, carrying nothing, going somewhere distant that the sheet could not hold. The keeper was at the margins, the way keepers often are here - not attending but present, a shape at the edge of the lamplight that I had learned not to turn toward directly.

The surveyor had his marks already. Four visits' worth, small cuts in the corner post of the bridge, the kind of thing that is not a measurement and not a word but holds both anyway. I put my hand on the post and the cuts were there and the wood was still damp.

The relay clerk had long since gone back. The record had gone with her, to wherever records go when they leave a place - not here, not retrievable. The distant reader held it now or had already turned from it. Fenncrossing did not know this and did not need to.

I stepped onto the plank. The bridge took my weight the same way it always does - that slight downward give and then the resistance, the water very close below. Umber-colored water. Moss on the near bank so thick it looked like upholstery. The lamp at my back made amber on the surface.

Lano was waiting on the far end. She had sat herself down in the dark fen grass and she was facing away from me, facing the open country where the fen ran out into low fields, and she did not turn when I crossed. I came off the planks onto the far bank and stood beside her and we looked at the same dark distance together.

The keeper was still at the margins. The surveyor was writing something - not measurements, just the kind of notation that surveyors make when they have measured enough and are making room for what the numbers do not cover. The bridge made a small sound in the current. The lamp held. The fen held.

Night nine of ten. One more night and then we would leave, and the place would go on without us, and the planks would flex for whatever crossed next. I put my hand on Lano's back and she leaned slightly against my leg and neither of us moved for a while.

The water was going somewhere. It had always been going somewhere.

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