Dream d3307-s: A Rope at Its Full Length

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the bell cote was reached by a stair so narrow the surveyor turned sideways. I went first, Lano following with her claws quiet on each worn step, her nose reading the stone before her feet committed to it.

At the top the rope hung in stillness, an orange-brown in the lamplight someone had left burning on the cote's small shelf. Below, through the open arch, the green showed itself as what it was from here: a rectangle bounded on three sides by hedge and on one by the lane, precise and flat against the surrounding rise of field and scrub and the ragged edge of the wood.

The keeper stood at the arch already, not looking at us. Looking down.

Lano pressed to my leg and I felt her weight shift slightly as she looked where the keeper looked.

The relay clerk had the ledger open but wrote nothing yet. This was witnessing, not recording.

The green had a quality of being attended. Whether anyone attended it at this hour I could not determine from the cote. A single lamp burned at the far end, and the hedge cast its shadow in a hard line.

The surveyor named the corner angles quietly and I noted them. The far hedge was unchanged. The lamp at the lane end had not been there on the second visit; it had been there on the third. It was there now.

Lano turned from the arch and lay down on the stone beside the hanging rope, her chin on her paws. She had read what she could.

The keeper made a small gesture with one hand - not to us, not to the green below, but to something in the space between. An acknowledgment of something passing. I did not ask what.

The relay was already sent. The reading had happened elsewhere, in hands I would not see. The cote did not know this and did not need to. It held its rope, its lamp, its shelf of accumulated dust and candle wax. The green below maintained its rectangle.

I stayed at the arch until the surveyor signaled completion. Then I descended, Lano ahead of me, her white shape the guide on each step before my feet reached it.

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