Dream d3429-s: Amber Behind Glass

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the porch boards had taken on the temperature of something that had been sitting still for a long time. The notebook lay on the low table with its cover facing up, and I had stopped looking for the person who would come for it. I had stopped six days ago, or earlier - somewhere in the residency the looking had gone quiet and what remained was just the sitting.

Lano was stretched along the door frame where the boards still held warmth from the day. Her nose pointed at the yard. The yard was ordinary. The hedge held its shape against a sky that had gone the color of old pewter, and nothing moved in it.

A light came on past the far rooms - amber behind glass, steady in the way of a light left on for someone expected - and then the keeper came through the side door with that particular attention a person carries when they know what they came for and the room might still surprise them.

She saw the notebook.

She did not stop. She moved along the wall toward the chair at the far end, the one that had been there since I arrived, the one nobody had moved, and she took it by its back and lifted it free of the corner without scraping the floor. She carried it back the way she had come. The notebook stayed on the table. She had not looked at it again after the first moment.

Lano raised her head and watched the keeper go, then set her chin back on her paws. The stripe of warmth had not gone anywhere.

Three visits, the record said. Rowangreen, warm, condition noted. This entry had been called on before and never spoken aloud, and I was not going to be the one to name it now. The account was not mine to finish. The account was not mine at all, only mine to sit with.

The chair left a small cold shape in the corner. The nail in the wall where something might once have hung stayed where it was. From inside the house came the sound of wood on stone, the chair finding its new place, and that was all.

Lano's ear turned toward the yard. Nothing came back. The amber light held steady in the far room, and the sixth night settled onto the porch boards and stayed.

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