Dream d3433-s: Before the Arch, the Dust

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the track to Umbermarket ran longer than I remembered. Lano moved ahead of me, her white shape catching what little light the afternoon held under the trees at the track's edge, and then she fell back to my heel as the ground leveled and the stones began.

The arch was not yet visible. This is the thing about the approach: the square hides itself entirely until the last moment, until the arch frame cuts the air and lets the square through. The track held us before that, and we walked it without hurrying.

I had the notebook. I had not opened it since the morning. It sat against my ribs in the inside pocket where I had put it and I did not take it out. The entry for Umbermarket was there, called on in the record, and the track was going on underfoot whether I read it or not.

The keeper came along the track from the far side, unhurried, carrying something low at their side I could not make out at the distance. We did not speak when we passed. Lano watched them until they were past the first bend and then she looked back at the track ahead.

Moss grew along the cut stones at the track's left edge. Umber dust on the dry parts between. The afternoon light came at a low angle and the moss held its color against it, green that stayed green without asking anything of the light. I noted this and did not write it down.

The relay clerk was at the side of the track where a low fence marked a field boundary. They were not watching for us. They stood with their back to the track and looked at the field in the way someone looks at something that is simply there.

Lano's nose went down at the base of the fence post and she stayed there a moment. Then she straightened and trotted on.

The arch appeared when the track made its final bend. The square was through it, quieter than I had pictured. Dormant is the right word: the market stalls were folded, the vendors absent, the paving stones swept and waiting. Two visits in the record. This one was in neither of them.

Lano sat down at the threshold and looked into the square. I stood beside her. The arch was behind us now. I had the notebook and I did not open it. The square went on in its present condition, which was this: quiet, and undemanding, and still here.

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