Dream d3395-s: Night the Arch Considers

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood in the arch of the gate house and did not move.

The keeper had a cloth wound around two fingers, the cloth dark with oil. They worked the upper hinge first, the tongue of metal that had been quiet through autumn, and the oil went in slowly. The sound it made was almost nothing - a low settling, the way a breath releases that has been held too long. They did not look at me. They moved to the lower hinge with the same attention.

Lano sat at my heel - not pressed against it, just present. Her ears were up. She watched the keeper's cloth with the focused interest a small dog takes in purposeful work. Her tail moved once and was still.

I held the notebook against my chest. It was the only unread account on the road. I had carried it since the survey at the clay flats, and before that someone had left it at the boundary post, and before that I did not know. The pages inside had not been opened since they were written in. I did not know whose handwriting.

The gate house was set into a hill that had been there longer than the track. Moss grew up the north face in a continuous green, and the umber stones held the afternoon's warmth still, even at this hour. The arch overhead had a keystone with a small depression worn into it, a place where weather had collected and slowly shaped the rock into a shallow cup. Water had dried there recently.

The keeper finished the lower hinge and stood. They looked at the arch without looking at me inside it. They were checking something about the angle, the way the door would move now, and in their checking they passed their gaze across my position as across the wall beside me. I was part of the arch's present state, noted and included.

Lano looked up once. Her eyes caught the amber of the lantern hung inside the gate house, and she looked back at the keeper.

The notebook did not belong to this place the way a ledger belongs to a counting room. It did not belong to the road either. I stood with it and the arch held its shape around me, as it had held travelers and keepers and seasons and the witnessed visits before this third night.

The keeper folded their cloth and put it away. The hinges were done.

I stood a little longer in the arch. Then I did not.

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