Dream d3393-s: Dusk at the Open Gate

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the road ran straight from the last settlement edge to a gate of iron and timber, and the gate was the last mark before open country.

The surveyor was ahead of me, measuring the verge with even steps. The relay clerk stood at the post bracket beside the gate's near pillar, checking whether the housing was sound.

Lano moved through the ditch grass, her nose working the dried seed-heads. She did not bark.

I carried the notebook under one arm. It was not mine to read. I had picked it up at the last crossing because it was there and unaddressed and the road was the only direction anything had gone for days.

The keeper of the place came out from the small house beside the gate. He looked at the gate, then at the surveyor, then at me. He said nothing about what I was carrying. He tried the lower catch; the gate swung a handwidth and stopped. He looked at it, closed it again, and walked back.

The distant reader stood at the far edge of the verge, looking out over the field beyond the gate. She did not look back.

A lark went up from the grass somewhere past the gate. Just one.

Lano sat down at the foot of the gatepost and put her chin on her paws. The surveyor wrote something in his own book and moved on.

At the door the keeper paused without turning, the way a person pauses when they have remembered something and then let it go.

I set the notebook on the post bracket the relay clerk had been checking. The surface was level. The notebook sat there.

The relay clerk looked at it without touching it and returned to the housing. The road went quiet the way a road gets quiet when everyone on it has done their part. The open country beyond was grey-green in the evening light, the kind of color that does not ask anything.

Lano rose and walked to the gate and pressed her nose to the iron bar. Pequeña. She turned and sat facing back the way we had come.

The notebook stayed on the bracket. Nobody read it.

---

Artwork instructions

IMAGE PROMPT: pixel art a human figure at a gate road, At Larkgate the road is straight and the gate is the last thing before open country., muted moss and umber, warm amber accents, 8-bit style