Dream d3518-s: The Paving Closes Over

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I could hear my own footsteps change in the last block before the square, the sound going flat and wide as the paving opened ahead of me. Lano had already crossed in. She stood at the center and turned back once, nose up, then nose down, reading whatever the night had left on the stones.

The square was not large. It had the shape of something set aside rather than assembled for use - no vendor marks, no worn paths between fixed points. The keeper of the place sat at the far edge on a low step, hands loose, not attending to anything I could name. He did not look up when I entered.

I knelt at the near joint where the paving met the building line and pressed the sheet into the gap. The relay clerk had folded it that morning and I had carried it through the afternoon - a date on it and the name of this place, and nothing of the entry behind it. The joint took it. Stone holds what you press into it without offering an opinion on the matter.

Lano came and put her nose to the edge where the sheet disappeared into the crack. She sat beside me a moment, one ear lifted. Then she padded back toward the center and lay down on the flat warm stone and put her chin on her paws.

The keeper did not move from his step. He was watching the far side of the square, or watching nothing. I could not tell which.

No one came in from either end. The sheet stayed in the joint with its date visible at the fold and the rest of it held down in the dark. The air had the quality of places that do not expect to be visited - not unfriendly, only complete in themselves the way a room is complete when it has had its furniture long enough to forget it.

I did not open the notebook. I did not tell the keeper what the entry held. I walked back across the flat paving and Lano rose and came beside me, and when I turned at the edge of the square the keeper was still on his step and the joint was still closed and the square was empty and holding the sheet in the way places hold what is left with them.

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