Dream d3447-s: Stacked and Waiting

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the gap in the wall was not much wider than a shoulder. I stood on one side and did not pass through. The keeper was on the other, lifting cut turf in thick dark slabs and setting them against the stone, one above the last, not quite filling the gap but working toward it from both edges in.

Lano sat beside my left foot, nose forward, watching the keeper's hands. The turf smelled of iron and peat, freshly cut, the dark underside still wet. The keeper did not look at me. The work was steady.

The notebook was in my coat. I had stopped checking whether anyone would ask for it.

There is a ledger that names Tamarackcroft. It has been named there, and never aloud, and I was not here to change that. The wall ran both ways from the gap, low moss-covered stone, and beyond it the land dropped off into rough grass and then nothing I could name. The sky was pewter at the edges and lighter above, not yet dark.

The keeper lifted another slab. When it settled the sound was soft and final. Lano's ears moved once, then stilled. Cold air came through the gap from the far side, carrying peat and standing water and something green.

I did not ask what was being built or closed. The work was the work.

There were seventy places like this one in the record that no spoken account had reached - not lost, there on the page and exact, but untouched by a voice. Tamarackcroft was among them. I had come to stand here and let it be what it was.

The keeper stacked another course. Lano pressed her side against my ankle, warm through the cloth. The gap narrowed by another finger's width. Not sealed. Not opened. Present.

The relay clerk was somewhere behind me, not close. The entry-keeper had the count. I consulted neither.

Near my boot, a small rounded stone sat in the grass - the size of a walnut, as if someone had set it there and forgotten it. I left it where it was.

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