Dream d3422-s: The Ordered Row

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the yard at Ironspire was swept and the fire pit was cold and all the tools hung on their pegs. The record had the name. The entry-keeper had it written somewhere. And now here it was: a yard, a cold pit, tools in order.

Lano came in at my side, her white coat carrying the faint smell of the path. She moved toward the nearest peg, nose low. A mattock. A rake. A coil of wire on a nail. She circled them once and sat.

The notebook was in my hand. I had stopped turning to look for whoever might want it.

A keeper of the place stood near the shed wall. Not watching me. Watching the yard the way you watch something that does not need watching. The relay clerk was there too, at the far corner, still. The entry-keeper had come in behind me and was somewhere near the gate.

Nobody asked what I had written.

The ash in the pit had blown to the near wall and lodged in the mortar joints. The broom had been here and not there. I noted it the way you note the color of a door - as a fact about the place, not a failing.

Lano padded to the cold pit and sniffed its rim. One slow circle. She came back and pressed against my leg for a moment, then sat again and looked at the open ground past the gate.

The keeper of the place did not move.

I counted the tools without deciding to. Short row, long row. Nothing missing. I closed the notebook without having opened it.

The sky was the color of old tin. No wind. Four visits in the record, the place had been here before all of this, and it did not know or need to know that I had come to witness it rather than to use it. It went on being what it was. The fire pit was cold. The tools were in their row. Lano breathed at my side.

The entry-keeper did not write. The relay clerk did not cross the yard. The keeper of the place remained where they stood.

Ironspire was quiet and ordered and asking nothing of anyone present.

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