Dream d3380-s: Downwind of the Stone Check

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the river smell came first - coal and cold water and something older underneath, iron leaching from the gorge walls into the dark.

The notebook was inside my coat, spine-in so the cover faced my ribs. I had been carrying it since before Ironbridge and had not opened it once. I did not know whether I was meant to. The weight of it had become ordinary, like a stone I had forgotten I was holding.

Lano moved at my heel, her nose down, reading the towpath where I could not. She stopped once, ears lifted, then continued.

The keeper was at the boundary stone when I came around the bend. They crouched with a lamp near the ground, not so much inspecting the stone as listening to it - one finger running along the carved line that marked the edge of the residency ground. The lamp threw a small amber circle into the dark. I stepped off the path and stood downwind.

The surveyor was somewhere behind me; I could hear the faint scratch of a stylus on a field sheet. The relay clerk was at the far edge of the lamp's reach, copying into a ledger that was not mine.

Lano sat down beside me. She did not go toward the keeper.

The keeper found something at the base of the stone - a crack, or a mark not in the record - and crouched lower. They took a small brush from their belt and cleaned the carved line slowly, without rushing. The iron smell was sharper here. The stone had been here longer than the bridge.

I watched and breathed and the notebook pressed against my ribs.

The keeper stood, wiped their hands on their coat, and looked toward the bridge without looking at me. The iron caught residual warmth at its joints, amber in the dark. The relay clerk closed their ledger. The surveyor's stylus went quiet.

Nothing was asked of the notebook. Nothing was asked of me.

Lano's tail moved once, slow, and she leaned against my ankle.

The keeper walked back toward the far bank. Their lamp grew small and did not go out.

I remained downwind until the stone was only a stone again, and the river went on below with its ordinary sound, neither arriving nor leaving.

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