Dream d3423-s: The Yard Runs Out

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the gravel gave way to packed earth without a seam, and I was already past the last gate before I noticed the change. Lano trotted ahead, her white shape small against the pale grass of the yard, ears flat in the early wind. The horizon was far and low and unbroken.

The notebook rode in my coat, closed. I did not open it. Whatever the road called for, I had written it already or I had not.

Ironspire stood behind me, its walls still holding the dark on one side. A window showed a lamp; the entry-keeper was at the table, working. I did not turn back to see what she wrote. She had her own account. The lamp stayed steady.

Lano stopped and pressed her nose to the grass where the yard began its long slope toward the road. She held there a moment, reading something I could not smell, then trotted on. The yard was dry. Seed-heads rattled against each other where the wind passed.

The clerk had given me no receipt for the visit. There was nothing to receipt. Five times the record had brought me here and five times I had walked the rooms and the outer buildings and stood at the boundary where the place stopped and the ordinary ground began. The condition was dormant. I had put that word in the notebook. Not declining. Not ending. Just still.

A crow moved along the ridgeline of a low wall and did not stop to look at me. The wall was old, its coping slipped but holding. I did not touch it.

Lano waited for me at the first bend, sitting in the road with her nose turned toward the field. I came up and she rose and moved again. Ahead the yard ran on until it ceased to be yard and became the open ground and then distance. I kept the notebook in my coat and did not count the steps and did not mark anything further.

The sky above the horizon held a pale strip where the clouds had broken. Ironspire was behind me, residency complete, the account neither full nor empty but what it was. The entry-keeper had what she needed. The place had what it had.

Lano trotted on and I followed her out to where the road opened and the horizon held nothing but itself.

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