Dream d3287-s: Slower Than the Stones

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the roof of the mill was cold under my palms and the air smelled of grain dust and damp oak, and the sails moved above me with a patience I had not expected, turning in long deliberate arcs while somewhere below us the millstones kept their own faster rhythm, a low percussion that came up through the boards and into the soles of my feet.

The keeper stood near the edge, not looking down. He had stood this way the last time, and the time before that. His hands were in the same position, loosely at his sides. The place had not asked him to change and he had not changed.

Lano sat near the short chimney stack at the center of the roof. She had found a place where the warm air rose through the mortar and she stayed there, nose pointed at the moving sails, her ears tracking each pass. She did not bark.

The surveyor moved along the parapet in silence, running a hand over the stone capping. The relay clerk sat cross-legged on a section of flat roof near the stair hatch and held the ledger open but did not write. The distant reader had not come up. I had not asked why.

The sails crossed the lamp at the road below in long intervals. Each time they cut the light the shadow swept over us and went, and the stones kept grinding without pause.

I crouched beside Lano for a moment and felt the warmth through the mortar myself. She pressed her shoulder once against my knee without turning her head. The sails were still going.

What the record said when it was handed elsewhere I did not speak aloud. The keeper had not asked. The mill did not stop to receive any answer. The grain came in and the flour went out and the sails described their slow circles independent of what had been written or where it had gone.

The surveyor made a mark on her own page. The relay clerk closed the ledger.

I stood again and the distant reader appeared at the top of the stair hatch, looked across the roof at the turning sails, and said nothing. Lano's tail moved once, unhurried.

The stones were still faster than the sails. They had always been faster. The place kept both tempos without choosing between them.

--- IMAGE PROMPT: pixel art a human figure at a mill roof, From the roof the sails turn slower than the stones below them., muted moss and umber, lamplight amber accents, 8-bit style

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