Dream d3475-s: The Chimneys Keep Their Smoke

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I left the sheet at the edge of the loose tile rather than under it or over it - just beside it, where the clay had pulled away from the stone. The date was in the relay clerk's hand, and below it the name of this place, and nothing of the entry. I set it flat and did not weigh it with anything.

Lano was already at the far edge of the square. She stood with her nose toward the road, her small white shape still against the morning. She did not look back at the tile. I did.

The keeper of the place came out of the alley beside the third chimney - not the first, not the last, but the one whose flashing had been cracked since before anyone in the square could say when. She crossed to the sheet, stood over it, and pressed it flat with the toe of her boot. Not to read it. Not to gather it. Only to press it. Then she returned to the alley, and the alley received her without making a sound.

The chimneys were six. I counted them from the road-end of the square, which is where counting made sense: they were still smoking, all six, going straight up in the still air, and I counted them because my hands had nothing to carry. The notebook was closed in the satchel. I did not open it.

The entry-keeper waited at the point where the square's stone became dirt. The relay clerk stood already on the road itself, three paces past her, facing forward. Neither spoke. Neither asked about the sheet.

Lano came back to me once, pressed the length of her flank against my leg, and trotted forward again past the entry-keeper into the road. I followed.

The square held its loose tile and the pressed sheet and its six straight lines of smoke. The road ahead had no name that I knew. We had not been told how far the unfinished way ran, or what came after it, or whether the next place would have a keeper who came out of an alley when a sheet was left.

The square was going on. I was not in it anymore.

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