Dream d3366-s: The Keeper in the Willows

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I came to the brook at Garnetbrook on a night of low water and no moon to speak of, just enough light in the sky to read the stones.

Lano went ahead. She tested each stone with a paw before trusting it, her small white shape moving sure-footed across the current while I followed, placing each boot where she had already decided was safe. The pack rode high and the water never touched it. Stone by stone. The brook went past us on both sides and the pack stayed dry.

The keeper was on the far bank, moving through the reeds along the waterline. Not crossing toward us. Not signaling. Attending. There is a worn path there, worn enough to be older than this visit, worn enough to belong to someone who tends the bank the way tending gets done when a place has been left to itself a long time.

I reached the far side and stood where the reeds thinned. Lano found a stone she approved of and sat beside it, watching the water.

The notebook is wrapped in oilcloth in the top of the pack. It has not asked to be opened. I have been carrying it since the road before the last settlement and the only thing I know about it is that it is not mine. Nobody on this road has looked at it twice. Nobody has asked what it says. I have been looking for the look that means yes, this is the right place, and this bank does not give it.

The keeper moved into the willows without slowing. I watched where they had gone. The willows stayed still.

"Silencio," Lano said, once, to the brook or to the dark beyond the willows, not to me.

I sat on a root while the pack dried. The relay clerk would have notes from the previous account - someone else had stood on this bank before me, in different water, with different weight. I did not have those notes with me. I had the notebook and the present bank and the sound of the current going past in the dark.

The keeper came back along the waterline, farther down. The place went on.

pixel art a human figure at a brook crossing, The dreamer crosses the brook stone by stone and the pack stays dry., muted moss and umber, warm amber accents, 8-bit style

---