Dream d3428-s: Nine Stakes and a Bend

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the path between cut hedges runs longer than I remember. Lano goes ahead, her white shape against the green pressed flat on either side, and I keep the notebook under my arm because there is nowhere to set it down.

The hedges are box, I think, or something close to it. They were cut recently enough that the flat faces still show pale where the blades went through. Seven paces across at the widest point. The entry-keeper noted something here once - I know this without reading what I carry, the way you know a room's smell before you enter it.

A water channel runs alongside the path on the left. I hear it before I see it, a thin sound lower than the hedge line. Lano stops and listens the way she does, head tilted, then goes on. I write down: water audible from the path, source not yet visible. I write it in pencil because the light is flat and pen dries wrong in this kind of damp.

The keeper is already at the far bend. I can see the shape of them, not the face. They are counting the stakes on the right-side hedge, touching each one with an open hand rather than a finger. I count with them from where I stand: nine stakes in this section, then a gap, then the bend takes them out of sight. I write down nine.

Lano comes back to me and presses briefly against my leg, then goes ahead again. Suave, she says, or something like it, under her breath, more sound than word, aimed at the channel and not at me.

The roofs are not visible yet. The last turn holds them back. I know they are there because the record says three visits and each time the same approach, the same withheld arrival. The keeper finishes with the stakes and stands at the bend without turning. The entry-keeper would note what time they finished. I note only that they did.

The water is still audible when I reach the first bend. The hedges close to about four paces here and the light changes, more canopy than sky. I write: narrows at first bend, light shifts. The notebook does not need to know why. The place is going on in the way places do when the accounting catches up to them but does not change them.

I do not turn the last corner before I wake. The roofs stay where they have always been, just past where I can see.

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