Dream d3425-s: The Chair Taken From the Far Wall

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the bench was cool under my hands and the ledger lay open across my knees, the pages a little damp from the night air coming off the green. Rowangreen at night is a quiet place, not empty - the trees hold some warmth, and the grass still carries the smell of an afternoon that was longer than most. The entry-keeper had set a chair from the far wall beside the bench before leaving, and it stood there angled slightly inward, as if someone had just risen from it.

Lano sat at my feet, her nose turned toward the path that curved away into the darker part of the green. She did not bark. She watched the dark with her ears up and her tail still, and after a moment her tail began a slow movement, unhurried.

The clerk had written the date at the top of the open page in careful, even letters. Below it, the account of Rowangreen: 155 places, 0 visited in this record. The entry was one of 41 the record had called on and that no voice had named aloud. I did not add to it. I read the numbers and let them stand.

The keeper came across the green carrying a lamp, not toward me but at an angle that passed nearby. The lamp was small and the light from it moved against the grass and the lower branches without reaching far. She did not stop. The green went on around her and she went on through it.

The chair from the far wall was still warm on the seat when I pressed my hand to it - someone had sat there not long before the clerk left. I did not know who. The ledger did not say. Its condition was warm, and I wrote nothing under that line, only looked at it for a moment and then looked up at the green, which was dark and continuing.

Lano turned her head and rested her chin on my foot. The lamp across the green had gone out of sight behind a stand of trees. The 71 unentered places were unentered still. The account was as it was. The green went on.

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