Dream d3265-s: The Roof That Was Not There

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the window seat at Quillbridge held the same worn cushion, the same shallow ledge where ink had dried and the page had been folded once for travel. Lano pressed her nose to the glass and fogged a small circle. Below, the street ran between buildings the same as it had, except for one: a roof I did not remember, its ridge sharp and new against the older tiles.

I did not write it down as an error. I wrote it as what the window now showed.

The keeper of the place set a cup at the edge of the ledge without speaking, the way someone does when the work they expect to see is already done. The lamp behind me threw my shadow forward onto the glass, and through it I could see the new roof sitting below my reflection's chin, the way a fact sits inside an argument you cannot answer.

The clerk had gone down to the street with the survey book. From here I could watch them cross to the far corner, stop, look up. They would note the roof. I did not need to call down to tell them it was new.

Lano turned from the glass and nosed my knee, then sat. Her tail moved once. Whatever she had found in the fogged circle satisfied her and she moved to the warmth below the lamp, circling twice and settling.

The account that had been written at this window was somewhere else now, in other hands, read by the distant reader in whatever room the distant reader occupied. Nothing from that direction would arrive. The account did not need to return. It had been a sending, not a question.

I pressed my palm to the cushion where I had sat before and found it the same, the seams worn in the same places. The new roof did not change the cushion. It did not change the lamp. It was simply part of the view that the view had added to itself in the interval.

Quillbridge went on. The keeper refilled the lamp without being asked. The street below held its noise at a low register, cart-wheel and voice and the ordinary percussion of a place that did not know it was being witnessed again. Lano looked once more at the glass. "Mira," she said softly, then closed her eyes.

I wrote: one roof added. No cause given.

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