Dream d3439-s: Bare Counter, Amber Lamp

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the back room was smaller than the entrance suggested, low-ceilinged and smelling of cedar and old paper, and the counter ran the full width of the far wall. I set the notebook open on it. The pages caught the amber light from the hanging lamp, and I stepped back into the doorway and out.

The market sound came through the wall in pieces: a cart wheel on stone, someone calling a price, the cut-off end of a laugh. Lano pressed close against my calf as I stood in the passage outside, and then she lifted her nose to the gap under the door and held it there, working at something I could not reach.

The entry-keeper passed me in the passage without a word. I moved aside. She had a ledger of her own tucked under one arm, thicker than mine, spine worn smooth. She pushed through a different door further down the passage and was gone. The relay clerk stood at the junction of the passage and the side lane, sorting folded papers into two piles on a windowsill. He did not look up.

I did not go back in. The notebook was open, the lamp was burning, the counter was bare otherwise. That was the whole arrangement.

Lano moved away from the door and sat on the passage stones facing the lane. Her ears shifted forward. A cart passed the end of the lane, heavy-loaded, and the driver's voice rose once and fell. She watched the space where the cart had been.

The keeper came around from the market side and paused at the entrance to the back room, looking in from where he stood. He stayed there a minute. He was checking, I thought, but not the notebook. He checked the lamp, checked the state of the counter, checked something about the room that had nothing to do with what I had placed there. Then he moved on.

The market noise continued. Lano stood, circled once on the passage stones, and lay down facing the lane. The lamp inside threw a strip of amber light under the door and across the floor. It did not reach where I stood.

I waited. The place went on.

---