Dream d3560-s: The Pane Set True

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I heard seed trays before I saw them - a flat wooden knock from somewhere inside the gate, the sound of two trays being shifted aside to make space along the inner wall of the garden.

The light had gone amber. The walled garden held it differently at this hour; the air near the south-facing stonework was still close and warm, while the shadowed strip along the north side had already turned cool. The last heat sat in the beds, rising faintly through the covering cloth.

One person knelt at the low frame where the loose pane had been leaning all afternoon. The other stood nearby, a seed tray balanced in the crook of one arm, not yet set down. I came through the gate and stayed near the fig tree in the corner, where the shade had already pooled.

Lano was there before me, sitting in the dry soil beneath the lowest branch. She raised her nose when I came through, recognized me, and settled again, her chin resting on her front paws.

The kneeling one worked the old compound from the channel with a narrow tool - grey putty in a long ridge, lifted away cleanly and set aside. The other lowered the seed tray onto the bench without being asked and came to hold the frame still.

Nothing hurried in it. New compound went in with a thumb, pressed and smoothed in even passes along all four sides of the channel. Then the pane was lifted from where it leaned - both sets of hands on it, one at each corner. For a moment the two held the glass between them and neither moved. The pane caught the sky, pale and cooling overhead.

It went in top-edge first, then settled down. The frame took it.

Small wood strips were tapped in along the edges, one at a time, soft taps, just enough. The last strip went in as the sun dropped behind the garden wall, and the pane stopped reflecting the sky and began to show the garden itself instead: the covered beds, the bare bench, the fig tree, and Lano in the soil beneath it.

The two stepped back together. One gathered the tools into a cloth. The other lifted the seed trays and carried them toward the far end of the garden.

Neither said anything about the glass.

I stayed until the light had finished changing. The pane was just a pane now - unremarkable in its frame, holding its place before dark.

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