Dream d3537-s: Proof at the Eave

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I was on the slate roof above the empty market, standing back from the work I had done the night before. The ridge slate had been lifted and reset - I could see the line of it, the slight difference in color where the old mortar had been cleaned away. Now the sky pressed down gray and close, the kind of gray that means rain in an hour or means rain in a minute depending on which way the wind reads.

I didn't move toward it. The work was done. What happened next was not mine to do.

Lano sat near my feet, her ears tipped forward, reading the air the way she does before weather. Her nose lifted once, twice. Small and white against the slate, she caught some scent I couldn't place and held it.

The first drops came so quietly I almost missed them - individual taps on the dry slate, turning it dark where they landed. The gutter at the eave was empty, then not. Water found the channel the way water always does, by taking every low path at once. I watched it gather and run. The patched section held. The joint I had worried over held. The water did not hesitate or pool where it shouldn't; it moved on past the repair as if no repair had ever been needed.

I stood on the sloped surface, one hand resting on the chimney stack for balance, and watched the gutter do its work. Below, the market stalls were folded shut. Nobody was there to confirm anything. The crates and canvas covers took the same rain with the same disinterest.

A voice somewhere below called out - nothing to do with the roof, some exchange between two people I couldn't see, already moving away. They didn't look up.

Lano shook herself once, scattering small drops, and pressed against my knee.

The water ran clean. I had not been asked whether it was right. I did not offer a verdict. The gutter received what came to it and carried it away, and the roof did what it was for, and nobody appointed me anything.

--- pixel art a human figure at the slate roof above the empty market, a lifted ridge slate, The work is tried in its usual use, while the dreamer stays out of the way., muted slate and ochre, soft daylight, 8-bit style

---