Dream d3314-s: Seven Winds of Cord

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the falls were louder in the dark. Lano went in ahead of me, her small body pressing through the curtain of mist, and I followed with the lamp held low. The niche was the same stone shelf cut back from the rock face at the height of a standing person's chest, the account resting in its wrapping where it had been left.

The keeper was there. Crouching at the far wall with a wick between two fingers and a small secondary lamp set on the floor. The keeper did not look up when I entered. Lano did not bark.

I counted the wrappings this time. Three layers: outer cloth darkened at the fold-lines but intact, a second layer of something waxed, and innermost a length of cord wound tight at both ends. Seven winds at the left end. I had not looked closely enough before to count seven. The keeper set the secondary lamp upright and moved back toward the entrance without speaking.

The niche was shelved in four tiers. The account occupied the second. The first shelf held two river stones and a slip of bark I did not touch. The third and fourth shelves were empty in a way that felt considered rather than neglected - the stone swept clean, no dust catching the amber light. Something had been removed and the absence was deliberate. I did not ask about it.

Lano sat at my feet while I held the lamp up. She pressed her nose once against the waxed cloth and withdrew. "Quieto," she said, or I heard the word in the sound she made, and then she was still.

The falls continued outside. Mist moved through the entrance in slow pulses, each one leaving a faint trace on the stone floor. The account did not move. The clerk had read it elsewhere by now; the surveyor had set the position on the sheet; the distant reader had received whatever had traveled. None of that was here. What was here was the place going on without any of it: four shelves, two stones, one slip of bark, seven winds of cord, the keeper's lamp cooling on the floor beside mine.

I stood until the wick guttered. The falls would not stop for the night. They did not know anything had been witnessed.

---