Dream d3324-s: A Second Name in the Book

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the stove was cold by the time I reached it. Not recently cold - the ash had settled, pale and dry, and when Lano circled the hearth once she did not sniff long before moving away.

The book of arrivals sat open on the table. Someone had turned to a page near the back. The entries were in two hands, possibly three, and the last date was not recent. My name was already in the upper third of the page - I knew the shape of it, though I had not written it.

The relay clerk found the lamp oil behind a lower bunk and filled the lamp without being asked. The keeper of the place stood near the door that led out to the yard, not quite inside and not quite outside, watching the dark between the trees. I did not ask what they saw. Tamarackmoss at night makes its own kind of statement.

The surveyor had set a folded piece of paper on the bunk nearest the window. I did not open it.

Lano settled beneath the table with her nose on her paws. She made no sound. Outside something shifted in the undergrowth and she lifted her head, ears high, then lowered it again.

There were four bunks. Two had blankets folded at the foot. Two did not. The wall beside the stove had a set of hooks, three of them, and from two hung a coat I did not recognize. The third hook was empty. There was a smell of damp wool and pine resin and something faintly sweet I could not name.

I wrote the date in the book of arrivals. The relay clerk added the count: five present, one night. The keeper watched me write this and then went outside.

A second name in the book - mine, written again as if the first had been a question. I set the pen down.

The lamp burned low and amber. Lano shifted once in her sleep, pressing closer to my boot. The distant reader was somewhere else tonight and the record had moved on without us, had been read, had been set aside or filed or left open on another table in another room. Tamarackmoss did not know this and did not need to. The stove held its cold ash. The bunk I would take was the one with a blanket.

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