Dream d3440-s: Rain on the Open Page

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I sat at the bench in Nettlemarket with the ledger open across my knees, the counter running behind me in warm low light, and the clerk beside me had a pen already moving before I heard the first warning.

It came in Lano's ears first. She had been curled at my feet in the warmth that collects between the bench legs, but she lifted her head and the fur at her shoulders rose, and then she was standing with a short bark that cut the square clean.

The wind found the antenna masts a moment later. The guy-wires went taut and sang before I saw the masts themselves pitch and recover in the dark above the rooflines. The clerk did not stop. The pen inscribed the date in a careful hand, then the name of the crate, then the condition of the counter - open, which is what it was, which is what the page received.

Rain arrived without buildup. One moment the paving was dry; the next the cable trenches were running with black water, and the entry-keeper, who had been standing at the far edge of the counter with both hands resting flat on its surface, moved to press the cover over the nearest junction. No hurry in it. The entry-keeper knew that trench layout the way you know a corridor you have crossed a hundred mornings.

The generator behind the back wall stuttered. The lamp above the bench dimmed and held and dimmed again. Lano turned her nose toward the generator housing, then toward me, ears flat, tail carried low. I pressed my palm to the ledger's open pages so the wind would not take them.

The keeper of the place moved along the counter checking connections at each post with the deliberate motion of someone who has done this in weather before. The clerk continued. The crate. The counter. The date that was still today.

The masts held. The trenches ran full. The generator found its rhythm again after a long pause in which the lamp went fully dark for three seconds and Lano pressed hard against my shin. When the light returned it was the same as before, or close enough.

The clerk blotted the page and turned to the next. The entry-keeper drew a coat closer against the wind coming off the square. Outside, the wire still sang in the mast rigging, and the rain showed no sign of having said what it came to say.

I kept my hand on the open pages.

Nettlemarket kept going.

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