Dream d3385-s: Smoke Reads the Horizon

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood on the highest stone of the Ironbridge yard and the smithy ran out from under me in all directions, no road lifting from it anywhere, the iron horizon flat and permanent against a sky the color of cooled ore.

The notebook was in my hands. I had carried it through six nights of this residency without finding who it was for.

Lano moved ahead of me along the stone wall. She put her nose down at a crack between the courses, then sat back on her haunches and watched the yard with her ears tipped forward, reading something in the air I could not catch.

The keeper was at the far fire, working metal with tongs in a motion that was its own language from this distance. The relay clerk had set her stool near the doorway arch and wrote in her own book with her head inclined toward the page. The surveyor moved the length of the yard wall, not measuring, only walking the ground as someone does who already has the count and wants to feel it again underfoot. The distant reader stood at the edge where the iron horizon began and did not turn toward the yard.

I held the notebook and let the work go on.

There was smoke from two chimneys. On night three I had seen only one. I did not write this difference anywhere. I held the notebook at my side and watched both plumes go in the same direction and the difference was present whether or not I named it.

Lano found a flat stone near the central hearth and settled onto it with her chin dropped to her paws. She watched the keeper. The keeper worked. The relay clerk did not look up.

Seven nights in Ironbridge and the notebook had not found its person. This did not mean the search had gone wrong. The yard held its fires. The survey continued without my count in it.

I set the notebook on the high stone and stood beside it. Lano came and pressed her small weight against my ankle. The yard stretched to the iron horizon with no road in it and the two chimneys gave smoke in whatever direction the air decided.

The distant reader remained at her edge.

The keeper moved the tongs to a new position.

The ground held everything it had been asked to hold and did not ask for anything more.

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