Dream d3367-s: Umber Light Between Branches

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the orchard at Garnetbrook was already in its third night color - umber bark and the dry smell of cut wood drifting along the row. I came to the far hedge at dusk and stood there. Lano came with me, her white shape close against the darker hedgework.

The keeper was already in the row. She had a long pruning tool and she moved the way practiced people move, without announcement - one branch, a pause, another, then a step sideways. The fallen wood collected in the grass behind her.

I held the notebook. I had been holding it since the morning junction, where I found it set on a post and waited until it became clear no one was returning. The cover was dark, the pages closed. It was not my notebook and I had not opened it.

Lano's nose worked at the air. She moved forward three steps, stopped, and came back.

The surveyor had been through here - a peg at the row's south end, the string gone but the mark remaining. The relay clerk's notation was on the gatepost: a date, a count, nothing that named a person or a purpose. Two visits recorded. Whatever was in the notebook was not recorded on the gatepost.

The keeper reached the end of her row and moved to the next without looking toward the hedge.

A bird crossed between two trees.

I stayed where I was. Lano sat down in the grass. The notebook did not ask anything of the orchard and the orchard did not ask anything of the notebook. The keeper pruned. The light came lower and the amber went deeper along the bark.

If the notebook belonged here it gave no sign. If it belonged somewhere else it gave the same sign. I shifted it from one hand to the other and watched the keeper's back move away through the trees.

Lano made a small sound and then said, very quietly, "aquí," and then was quiet again.

I did not know if she meant the place or the moment. The keeper was still moving through the row. Garnetbrook went on in the low amber light.

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