Dream d3420-s: The Crow Stays Put

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the bench was cold under my hands and the fire pit behind me had gone to gray ash four days ago and stayed there.

The clerk sat beside me with the ledger across both our knees, though the weight of it fell on her side. She wrote the crow first — it was perched on the lip of the pit, and it had not moved in the time it took her to uncap the ink and find the date line. Then she wrote the date. Then she wrote: cold fire pit. These three things in order, as if the crow had caused the date and the date had caused the cold.

Lano sat at my feet and watched the crow. The crow did not look back.

The entry-keeper stood at the edge of the courtyard where the paving met the low wall. She was not reading anything. She held her hands flat at her sides and looked toward the far arch. Through the arch was a passage I had not walked yet — on this night or any of the three before. The arch was low and the stones above it were darker than the surrounding wall, as if something had once burned close to it from outside.

The keeper moved across the courtyard to stand beneath that arch. She put one hand flat on the dark stones and held it there a moment, then took it away.

The clerk finished her entry. She did not close the ledger.

I counted the chimneys visible above the roofline from the bench: seven. I had not counted them before. Two had iron collars. The others were plain. One leaned slightly toward the east, not enough to concern anyone, just enough to be a fact.

Lano's ears came up. The crow shifted its weight on the pit-rim. Then it settled again, head tucked slightly, watching nothing in particular.

The keeper came back across the courtyard and sat on the far end of the bench. She looked up at the leaning chimney for a while, then at her hands.

The ledger lay where the clerk had set it down. The ink was dry.

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