Dream d3388-s: The Lamp on the Landing

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the stair was stone and each step worn in the middle from long use. The light came through narrow slits in the tower wall - umber where the sun was already gone, amber where it had not quite left. I carried the notebook under one arm. Lano moved just ahead of me, her nails quiet on the worn stone.

The keeper was above. I could hear the small sounds of the place going on - a door, a thing set down, a passage of air through the slits. Lano paused on the third landing and her nose worked at the air. She sat and watched the upper flight without barking.

The relay clerk was on the landing below me, making the notes the clerk makes - about the stair, about the count of slits, about their orientation to the light. The surveyor had already gone ahead. Lano had been where the surveyor was and come back partway down and was waiting.

The notebook stayed in my arm. The stone was cool where the light did not reach and warm where it did. Moss grew in the wall corners - a deep green that was almost black in this hour. Kestrelspire had been here through other accounts. I was not the first to climb this stair and the stair did not comment on the order.

On the next landing the keeper had left a lamp. It burned low and steady. Lano sniffed the base of the lamp and moved away from it and sat facing the upper flight. The notebook rested in the crook of my arm. I looked at the keeper's lamp and at the way the light came through the slits and touched the worn center of each step and did not touch the edges.

The place held the question of who the notebook was for without requiring an answer. I stood on a step that many feet had worn to a hollow and the hollow was the whole account - not what the notebook said but what the stair already knew. Lano pressed against my leg once - "aquí" - and then moved ahead, up toward the next slit and the next worn step and the lamp burning on the landing above.

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