Dream d3402-s: Resin and the Record

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the smell of cut wood reached me before anything else - that sharp green resin smell, brief and clean against the cold air. Brackenspire's gate stood a few paces ahead, its posts dark with old weather, and a stack of split logs rose against the wall to my right, the end-grain pale and raw.

Lano had stopped behind me. She stood very still, nose lifted, reading something in the air above the stack. Her tail moved once, slowly, and then she trotted up beside me.

The keeper came through the gate with an armload of wood, the pieces stacked high under a chin tilted up to keep them from shifting. She did not look at the pack on my back. She did not look at me. Her boots were quiet on the packed earth. She turned along the wall and set the wood down at the end of the stack with a sound like a latch falling, then straightened and went back through the gate without pausing.

The relay clerk stood beside one of the posts, her record open across her forearm, a stub of chalk between her fingers. She marked something. The entry-keeper stood just inside the gate with her arms at her sides, watching the way the keeper crossed the yard.

I did not open the notebook.

Lano sat down beside the gate post and tracked the keeper's progress with her ears. Something moved in the wind between the log ends - a low, slow breath that came and went. I could not find the source of it.

The stack was taller than it had been at dusk. Someone had been up in the dark hours, splitting and carrying. The end-grain had not yet silvered. I counted the courses without deciding to, and then stopped. The entry-keeper had not moved.

Brackenspire held 1 witnessed visit in the record. Dormant was the word for its condition. I had not named it aloud. The clerk's chalk moved again, very small marks, and a page turned with a dry sound.

Lano pressed against my leg once - warm, solid - and then stepped away to work her nose along the base of the stack. The yard was quiet. The place went on. Nothing asked me what the notebook held, and I did not say.

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