Dream d3310-s: The Press and the Alder Road

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the air tasted of damp timber and old ink. We stood on the alder road, the ground beneath our boots soft with decaying needles and the residue of a long, slow season. Beside me, Lano moved with a quiet, rhythmic trot, her small white fur catching the amber spills of the lamplight. She stopped at the edge of the path, her nose twitching toward a cluster of ferns, her tail giving a single, low wag.

The press stood heavy in the shadows of the courtyard, a looming skeleton of wood and iron. The surveyor remained there, his silhouette hunched over the work, his hands moving in the steady, repetitive motion of transcription. I watched him for a moment, the scratch of his nib against the paper a dry, constant pulse in the evening. We left him there, a fixture of the house, still committed to the tally.

I looked at the current sheet. It held 150 places. Seventy-two were entered in spoken accounts, the ink dark and settled. Seventy-eight remained empty, white voids waiting for a voice. The present account of Aldergreen sat before me, noting five witnessed visits. It was a dormant place now, a return to a site that had already sent its account outward.

The relay clerk stood by my side, his face a mask of neutrality, holding the record that had already been read elsewhere. No answer would travel back. I felt the weight of the paper in my hand, a completed transaction.

Beside the house, the trees held their shape. The press continued its slow, grinding work. The surveyor did not look up. The lamps flickered, casting long, distorted shadows across the alder road. I watched the way the moss crept over the stone foundations, the way the light died in the hollows of the bark. The place went on, indifferent to the names it bore or the accounts it surrendered.

Lano sat at my heel, her ears perking at a distant sound of shifting wood. She let out a soft, muffled breath.

"Cerca," she whispered.

I turned my gaze toward the dark line of the road, where the shadows were deepest.

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