Dream d3455-s: The Lamp at This Hour

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the bench sat against a low wall at the edge of Pewtermill and the lamp above it gave enough light to write by. The clerk had the ledger open on one knee and the sack rested behind against the wall's base, and I sat near enough to hear the nib cross the page.

Pewtermill at this hour was a sound more than a picture. A gate somewhere, dragged across stone. Water running in a trough beyond the near buildings. The entry-keeper stood at the corner of the lane, not watching anything in particular, hands folded, attending to the hour the way a person attends to weather that is not their work to change.

The clerk wrote the date first, then the sack, then a line about the notebook. I did not look at the page. The notebook lay beside the ledger, its covers closed, and the clerk did not open it. It had been carried here and now it sat here, and neither thing needed explaining.

Lano moved along the low wall, nose at the base of it. She found a loose stone, nosed it forward an inch, then left it and came back to sit near my feet. She watched the lane the way she watches most things in the dark: ears up, waiting for nothing specific.

A keeper came out of one of the near buildings and crossed the yard without haste. He looked toward the bench once and kept walking. He did not stop to ask. He went through a door and the door closed and the yard was as it had been.

The clerk finished a line and waited for the ink to take. The entry-keeper turned slightly, as though something at the far end of the lane had shifted, then turned back. Nothing came down the lane.

I rested my hands on my knees. The sack had been heavier that morning. The last of the road was behind me and I had not thought of it much since the bench. Pewtermill was going on: the gate dragging, the water in the trough, the lamp burning at the rate it burned.

The clerk closed the ledger with two fingers and set it flat on the bench. The notebook stayed where it was. Neither of us said anything about it.

Lano put her chin on my boot for a moment, then lifted it and went back to the wall. The lamp held.

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