Dream d3412-s: The Hour Nobody Stopped

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the street in Yarrowcrossing was already moving when I arrived. The working hour had a texture to it - carts hauling cloth bolts, two people arguing a price at a doorway, a child cutting between them with something tucked under one arm. Lano moved close at my heel, her nose low, sweeping the cobbles in short arcs.

I carried the notebook and did not take it out.

The relay clerk was at the corner post, not doing anything particular, watching traffic pass the way a person watches water. The entry-keeper stood further along, near a tannery entrance, speaking to someone about a quantity. Neither of them glanced toward the notebook.

A keeper of the place came past pulling a loaded barrow, pausing briefly at the exact spot where the lane met the main road - pausing the way someone pauses at a threshold without knowing it - and then moved on. The wheel caught a rut and threw one of the bundles sideways. The keeper caught it without breaking stride.

Lano stopped at a drain grate and considered whatever smell was rising from it. She lifted her head and looked down the road, then at me, then back at the grate.

The working hour had its own density. I stood at the edge of it and let it pass. Around me: the smell of damp wool and something burning a few streets east. The light on the upper windows a pale amber warming toward yellow as the morning settled into itself. A woman at a stall was wrapping something in paper, folding the corners without looking at her hands.

The relay clerk said something to a passing cart driver - directions, a name, nothing - and the cart moved on. The entry-keeper finished his conversation at the tannery and made a mark in his own ledger, which was not my ledger, which was nothing to do with mine.

The notebook stayed where I was keeping it.

Lano trotted ahead a few paces and sat down in the middle of the lane, ears pricked at something I could not locate. I stood behind her and the street moved around us both - the cart, the wrapping woman, the relay clerk rocking slightly on his heels - all of it continuing the way it had been continuing before we came and would go on after.

The condition of the place was warm. I recorded nothing. I did not ask anything to pause.

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