Dream d3416-s: Where Both Roads Go

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the road above Yarrowcrossing split before we had gone a quarter-mile, and both forks ran out into the morning without turning back to see us.

The carts were still moving when we left. A team of three pulling timber, a lighter cart with covered goods, and two people walking beside a third cart that had a loose wheel they had not yet fixed. The relay clerk had already noted Yarrowcrossing in the ledger before daylight - six visits recorded, the condition marked warm, a place the record had called on long before any dream set the name down. I did not say any of that aloud. I put the notebook in the pack and tightened the strap.

Lano went to the edge of the road where the carts were thickest. She stood with her nose toward the timber load, ears forward, not moving until the last cart had gone by. Then she stepped back to the grass and shook herself once.

The entry-keeper had stood at the near crossroads since first light. She was not watching us. She was watching the place itself - the way the morning came down the slope toward the settlement, the way smoke from three chimneys went in three directions at once. She did not speak and I did not ask her anything. There was nothing to ask. Yarrowcrossing was warm. The record had it. It would go on being warm whether any word was written for it or not.

I checked the pack strap once more. The notebook was inside. I had stopped expecting anyone to come for it.

The keeper of the place was on the upper track, walking away from us toward the far fence line. He did not look back. The carts were still moving below the road bend, the timber swaying against its bindings, a driver calling something to another driver in a voice that was just vowels from where I stood.

Lano picked up a small stone from the edge of the rut and carried it three steps before setting it down again.

"Vamos," she said, and then she was already ahead of me, trotting toward the fork where both roads ran out of sight.

Both roads ran out. Neither one named the place it was leaving.

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