Dream d3444-s: The Keeper Lifts and Leaves

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the loft above the market smelled of sawdust and dried hay, and the floorboards gave slightly under my feet in the far corner where the crates were stacked. Lano had already explored the perimeter twice and settled near the trapdoor, her nose lifting occasionally toward the sounds rising from below: cart wheels, a voice calling counts, the soft percussion of market work going on without her.

The notebook was on the crate I had been using as a table. I had not opened it in some time. I had stopped checking whether anyone was coming to read it.

Nettlemarket had been in the record. Two visits, both witnessed, both written. And further back, a line in the account that pointed here, to something called on and never spoken aloud. I did not know what the line meant when I found it. I did not know any better now. That was all right.

Light came in through the single window, late-day light, flat and honest. It crossed the floor at a low angle and stopped short of the notebook by about a meter. The dust above the floorboards hung still.

The keeper came up through the trapdoor with a particular kind of efficiency: hands already reaching, eyes already scanning. She was a keeper of the place in the same way the beams were - without announcement, load-bearing. She took the space in with one look and her eyes passed over the notebook without stopping. Not dismissal. Not recognition. It was there the way the window was there, the way the dust was there.

She crossed to the far corner and took a crate from the floor. It was heavy enough that she shifted her grip twice before she had it balanced. Lano watched her from near the trapdoor - ears forward, tail low but not tucked, the particular attention she paid to work she had decided was not hers to interrupt.

The keeper did not speak. She had what she came for. She carried the crate back and went down the same way she had come up: efficiently, without ceremony. The trapdoor settled back into the floor. The sounds from below continued.

The notebook was still on the crate. The light had moved slightly, the way late light does. The market was going on in the usual way. Lano lowered her nose back to the floor and tracked something along the baseboard, slow and unhurried, until she reached the corner and turned back.

The entry in the record had pointed here. I had been here now, for six nights. Whatever it had wanted witnessed, I had tried to witness it. The loft held what the loft held. I wrote nothing. There was nothing to write that the place was not already keeping for itself.

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