Dream d3468-s: What the Juniper Holds

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the road out of Juniperfold was still in shade when we left, the hedge dark and wet-smelling behind me and the washing on the line across the yard that I was not turning back to take down. The entry-keeper had come out at first light with a cup she did not offer. The keeper had not come out at all. The relay clerk stood at the gate post as he had stood at the gate post every morning of the eight days we had been here, and I could not tell from his face whether eight days was a long time or nothing at all.

I set the sheet at the base of the gate post. A date and a place in ink I had not chosen. Nothing behind the date and the place except the date and the place. The entry-keeper watched me set it down. She did not pick it up.

Lano was already ahead on the road, her white shape against the umber of the track, nose low. She had not looked back since we passed the first corner hedge, only forward, the way she moved when the road was the point of it and not the destination.

The notebook stayed in the pack where it had been for eight nights. I had not opened it in Juniperfold. I did not open it now.

Behind me the washing hung. A pale sheet, a darker one, two small things I could not name from this distance. The wind caught the lighter sheet and it lifted once and came back. The line was not moving otherwise.

I walked. The juniper hedge ran along the road for a while and then ended where the road bent and the ground opened, and then I could not see Juniperfold behind me at all, only the sky above where it had been.

I did not know what the place would do with the sheet. I had set it down at the base of the gate post on dry ground and the entry-keeper had not moved toward it and the keeper had not come out. A wind was already coming around the corner of the house when I turned. A sheet of paper set at the base of a gate post and a wind coming around a corner - I was not there to see.

What I had was Lano ahead of me, her tail low and easy, and the road that had not finished yet, and the notebook still shut, and Juniperfold behind me keeping whatever it kept in whatever way it kept it without me watching and without me knowing and without anyone asking whether that was enough.

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