Dream d3283-s: Every Arc But One

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where Marrowmill held the smell of ground flour and cold stone, a smell that does not leave even after the millstones stop. The grinding floor was swept in slow arcs, the keeper moving from the center outward, the broom rasping against grit. The corner to the left of the door stayed full of gray dust and a torn piece of burlap that had been there, I was certain, the last time this place was entered.

Lano pressed against the threshold and did not come in. Her nose worked at the air. She watched the keeper without moving.

The surveyor stood to one side with his instrument folded under his arm. He did not take measurements. The relay clerk sat on a low stool near the far window where the light from outside made a pale square on the flagstones, and she held her book open but was not writing. The distant reader was not present in the room. I understood that the record had gone out already and there was nothing left to do but be here.

The keeper swept the arc again. Slow, even, the broom head turned at the far reach of each stroke. She did not look up. The dust moved ahead of the broom and settled again a little further along. She had the posture of someone who had been sweeping this floor a long time and expected to be sweeping it still.

I watched the corner. The burlap lay in the same fold it had held before. The dust around it was undisturbed.

Lano stepped in at last, her nails soft on the stone. She walked to the middle of the floor and sat. Her ears moved once, tracking something in the ceiling beams. Then she was still.

The lamplight on the grinding stone was amber and even. Outside, the wheel mechanism gave a low sound - not turning, just settling. The relay clerk turned a page without reading it. The surveyor shifted his weight.

The keeper came to the end of her arc and turned and began again. The corner did not change. I noted the torn burlap, the shape of the dust, the way the light did not quite reach it. I did not move anything. That was not what this was for.

Lano looked at me once, her small white face attentive, then turned back to watch the keeper.

The keeper swept on, and the corner kept itself, and the mill smelled of flour and stone and the particular cold that gathers in a place where something heavy used to turn.

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