Dream d3406-s: A Nail in the Plank

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the heath ran to every edge of sight and the spire stood at the middle of it the way a nail stands in a plank - not ornamental, not symbolic, just placed there. The road was a single pale seam crossing the grey-brown ground, and it led toward the spire without urgency, the way roads do when they have no other work.

Lano picked her way through the heather tufts, nose low, following something I could not smell. The morning was damp and still. No wind. The reeds at the drainage ditch to our left stood vertical and unstirring.

The entry-keeper had a stone in her hand - sandstone, flat, the size of a palm - picked up a quarter-mile back and carried since without examination. I had not asked about it. The notebook was in my coat pocket. I had not taken it out.

We walked. The spire did not come nearer at the rate you expect. The country between us and it was wide and level and offered no perspective trick; it was simply as far as it appeared. The road was straight. Lano lifted her head and watched a crow settle in the heather fifty yards off. The crow settled and became still. Lano watched it until it moved again, then lost interest and dropped her nose back to the ground.

A keeper stood at the verge where the road approached the spire's base. Not waiting, I thought - just present, the way a post is present. He did not watch us approach. He watched the heath to the north, which was empty, which had been empty as long as we had been walking.

The entry-keeper set the sandstone on the low wall at the road's edge. Set it without ceremony, the way you might set down a cup when you are done with it. I did not take the notebook out.

The spire's shadow, in the early light, fell east and slightly north across the heather. It was long and thin and did not move while we stood there. The keeper turned and looked at us once, then looked away, back toward the empty north.

Lano pressed against my leg for a moment, then moved off to investigate the base of the wall. The country went on. The dormant place continued its dormancy without asking anything of the witness.

---