Dream d3561-s: Wind at the Notch

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where before I turned the corner, I heard the loose pane shift in its notch. A low scrape, the weight of glass finding the edge of cut stone. I stopped walking. Lano stopped with me, her nose pointing toward the sound.

The frame had been notched to hold the pane upright without mortar or latch. Now I stood at the path's end and let the morning use it without me.

A woman arrived at the seedbed with a low watering spout. She did not look for me. She moved along the row, lifting and pouring in a slow rhythm, and the pane held. The small shoots below it did not bend. Outside the wall, past the leeward shadow, the grass in the open field moved nearly flat with the same gust. Inside the shelter, nothing moved that hadn't been planted to grow.

Lano sat down on the path and watched the woman work. Her ears tracked the sound of water hitting soil.

A second person came and knelt at the near end of the row, thinning the seedlings that had pushed too close together. The pane caught the overcast light and broke it soft, diffused, grey-white and even across the bed. Neither of them adjusted the frame. Neither looked toward where I stood at the outer wall.

The eight dated sheets from the road were still under the flat stone at the base of the wall. I did not go near them. The notebook in my coat pocket stayed shut.

When both women had finished and carried their tools back through the gate, the shoots stood as they had been found: upright, unheld by anything but shelter. Nobody asked me if the pane had passed.

Lano looked up at me once, then turned her nose toward the empty seedbed and let her ears drop.

The pane scraped once more in the notch, then settled. The wind kept coming. It held.

---