Dream d3358-s: One Boot on the Last Plank

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the bridge at Fennbridge had thirty-one planks between the south bank and the midspan post. I counted them because the surveyor was counting from the far end, moving toward me, and I wanted to see if we arrived at the same number. We reached midspan at the same moment and did not speak. We had not arrived at the same number.

The water came to my shins. I lifted the pack above my head though the crossing was not difficult and held it there anyway, the way a person does when the habit of caution is older than the particular crossing. Lano moved ahead, her paws finding each plank without looking down, and she stopped at the midspan post and sat with her ears up. The surveyor wrote something in a small book. Not the notebook. The notebook was in the pack above my head.

The keeper stood on the north bank beside the last plank, one boot on the gravel and one not quite lifted, and watched the crossing without approaching it. I set the pack down on the north bank gravel. The keeper's eyes moved to the pack and then moved away from it. Nobody came to it.

The relay clerk was already on the north bank with a narrow ledger, marking a column with a stub of pencil worn to its last useful length. I did not see what was in the column. The clerk closed the ledger without showing it. The notebook stayed in the pack.

The distant reader was somewhere behind the reed line on the east bank. I understood this from the keeper's posture, the way a body half-turns without completing the turn, orienting toward something that has not moved. The reeds held their position. The distant reader did not approach.

Lano pressed against my leg on the gravel. She had been in the water herself and her fur was dark at the edges of her paws. She did not look back at the bridge.

The keeper moved one boot onto the last plank of the bridge and then moved it back. I understood this as something the keeper did at this hour, at this hour regularly, without needing a reason that could be written down. The place had been here before the notebook arrived. The place continued.

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