Dream d3471-s: Notch at the Corner

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the yard at Cindersquare was laid out in rows, the tile racks reaching shoulder height, each shelf holding pieces set close but not touching. The clay was pale at the edges where it had begun to lose its water; the centers were still the color of river bottom, darker and cooler to look at than the edges. We did not touch them. Nobody had asked us not to.

Lano moved ahead of me down the first row, her nose working the air close to the clay without making contact. A few tiles had cracked in the setting - not broken, only opened at the edge in a line thin as thread - and she paused longest at those, reading something in them that I could not.

The keeper of the place was at the far end of the yard. She was checking the racks; her hand moved along the top slat of each frame without gripping it, a gesture more like memory than measurement. She did not stop when we entered and she did not turn.

The relay clerk carried the ledger under one arm. The entry-keeper had the sheet already folded to its crease. We came to the end of the second row and I set the sheet on the edge of a rack where the slat was wide enough to hold it flat. The date on it was today's date and below the date was the name of this yard and below the name there was nothing more.

The keeper reached our row. She looked at the sheet the way a person looks at a stone that has appeared on a path. Then she moved on to the next frame.

A tile at the end of the rack held a notch at its corner - not a fault, a mark made with intention, the kind that locates one piece in a run of many. Lano sat beneath that rack and watched the sheet settle. The evening wind came through the yard from the east side where the wall had a gap, and the sheet lifted at one corner, then lay back down.

The keeper passed us again on her return. She did not read the sheet. This is what Cindersquare did with it: held it between the dated clay and the evening air and kept on drying.

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