Dream d3503-s: The Bench Receives the Date

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the relay clerk was already seated when I arrived, the ledger open across both knees, and Lano came ahead of me through the gap in the stile and sat down on the grass where the path widened.

The clerk did not look up. The pen moved across the page: date first, then the name of the trough that ran along the east field, and nothing after that. I watched the ink settle. The entry was not an account of the place, only a notation that it had been reached. Quillfield in late afternoon had a warmth that came from the wood of the stile and the pressed earth of the path, not from the sun, which was behind cloud.

I tore the sheet along the folded crease and set it on the bench beside the open ledger. The clerk moved to one end to make room. Neither of us looked at it again.

Lano had found the trough by smell before I reached it. She walked its length with her nose at the rim and then sat at the far end and watched the field. The trough held a little standing water and some loose grass pressed to the bottom. I did not empty it or clean it. Quillfield kept its own level.

The keeper of the place came through the stile while I was still standing at the bench. He glanced at the sheet, then past it, toward the trough, and moved on through the field without stopping. I did not know if he had read it. The date was the only thing on it that could be read.

When we left, the sheet was still on the bench. A corner had lifted in the air moving through the field and come back down. The bench held it the way a bench holds any flat thing left on it: without choice, without record, without knowing what stood behind the date. Lano came back through the stile after me and her ears dropped to their resting angle. Quillfield was warm and did not require anything more of us.

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