Dream d3339-s: Water Over Wheel-Stone

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the sound of shallow water came before anything else. The ford was narrow enough that a loaded cart would cross with its wheel-rims just below the surface, and the current pressed a low continuous voice against the stone channel bottom.

Lano was already at the water's edge when I reached the bank. She drank with her muzzle low, her ears back in the way she carries them when she is satisfied with a place. I stood on the near bank and kept my notebook shut, both hands around it, not from intention but from the weight of the walk here and the nearness of the night.

The surveyor had gone ahead to the far bank and stood there with his back to us, reading the distance across the valley's dark. The relay clerk waited behind me on the path, near enough that I could hear her breathing slow after the descent. We had not spoken since the upper track.

On the near bank, a ring-bolt was set into the stone - old work, for tethering animals while the cart was moved across. The iron was eaten close to the surface. A keeper had come out to the water some minutes before us and stood now near the bolt, neither watching us nor ignoring us, hands at his sides in the manner of someone who has waited at this place before and knows the water's timing better than any visitor does.

The dark bulk of Ironfall sat back against the hill, settled there. No lamp in the upper windows. The lower opening where the cart track entered showed only shadow.

I did not open the notebook. The record had already traveled from here to wherever records go when they leave a hand, and nothing would come back along that road tonight. The ford did not require me to do anything with what I knew of it. It required only that I stand here while Lano finished drinking, while the surveyor read his distances, while the keeper kept his patience at the tether-bolt.

The water moved. The night moved inside the water. Lano lifted her head and shook it once, scattering drops onto the stone, then stood quietly beside me, watching the far side.

The clerk made a note. I kept my hands where they were.

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