Dream d3279-s: Her Way Across

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the water reached my ankles before I saw the stones. The crossing came up out of the dark that way sometimes - sound first, then the white shape of Lano already ahead, her nose working across the first flat rock while I stood on the bank still listening.

She moved carefully. I had not seen her do this before, or not in the same way: each step considered, her small body low, one paw placed and weighted before the next. The shale held the last amber of a lamp someone had left burning on the far bank, and her coat caught it.

I followed her line.

The surveyor stood at the near bank with a small notebook, pencil resting across an open page, having paused from measuring something upstream. The relay clerk was already on the far side, the record case at rest on the bank, its leather dark from an earlier crossing. Neither spoke.

Lano moved to the third stone and stopped. She pressed her nose to the surface for a long moment, reading something there - or satisfying herself about it - then looked back at me. I stepped onto the first stone, then the second, keeping to the line she had drawn. The water ran cold at the edges of each stone and the moss was thick on the shaded side.

The keeper of the place waited beneath the alder. She had been present each time I had come to Rowanbrook, in one form or another - not always the same keeper, perhaps, but the same office. Tonight she held nothing. She watched Lano complete the crossing and was still while I followed.

By the time I reached the far bank, the lamp had settled lower, the amber thinning. The stones behind me were already reasserting themselves into the dark. I did not look back to confirm the line.

Lano shook herself once and moved ahead into the warmth, her tail low and easy. "Buena," she said, just once, under her breath.

What had been sent from here was elsewhere now. I had not carried it back; it had gone by another road. The keeper turned without speaking and led us into the warm interior, where the night smelled of alder bark and old wood and the particular warmth of a place tended a long time.

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