Dream d3459-s: From the Far Stack

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the loft above the counting room was still warm with the heat the day had pressed into the beams, and the flour dust had settled into the joins between the boards in fine pale lines. The notebook lay on the angled shelf where I had set it, its cover facing up, and I had stopped watching to see who would come for it.

Lano was curled in the angle of a beam, her white coat faintly powdered with the same dust. She lifted her head when the hatch opened, ears shifting once, and then rested her chin back on her paws.

The keeper came up through the hatch with both hands on the rungs. He was a large man in a linen apron and he did not look at me or at Lano. He looked along the rows of sacks against the near wall, then past them to the far stack where the older rounds sat in their courses. He crossed the loft boards without a word. His footfall was heavy and even, and the boards gave a little under him each time.

He passed the shelf where the notebook lay. His eyes went to it the way eyes go to something out of place, held there a moment, then moved on. He worked a sack free from the third tier of the far stack, shifted it until its weight settled against his chest, and turned back.

Lano watched him pass. Her tail moved once.

The keeper went back down through the hatch. His boots on the rungs, then the hatch settling into its frame, then the sounds of the counting room below rising up: a drawer drawn and closed, a voice saying something short, the scrape of a stool across stone.

The loft held the warmth. The notebook lay on the shelf with its cover facing up, and the dust went on finding the joins in fine pale lines, and no one had asked what it held, and Pewtermill was warm and the sack from the far stack had gone down to wherever it was needed, and I sat with my back to the beam and watched the light stay steady in the high window and let the place continue.

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