Dream d3567-s: Before the Second Gust

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the repaired plank sat in the quay boards the way all repaired things sit: without announcement, available. Three nights of work - new fasteners, a wedge of oiled timber behind the upright where the grain had split against the rusted cleat - and now it was just boards. Indistinguishable from the rest. I stood back from the edge.

Lano pressed her flank against my calf and did not move. Her ears had gone flat. She was reading something off the canal's surface that I couldn't name - small chops crossing against the current, wrong-angled, the kind of chop that means the sky has already decided and is only now telling the water. Her nose twitched once, twice, and then she barked: one sharp note aimed east, toward the generator housing on the far side of the cable trench.

The first gust came off the rooftops before I could look - not a warning gust, the real thing, bending the antenna masts in a long slow arc that made a sound like distant rope under tension. A roofing panel on the trench cover lifted at one corner and began to rattle. Rain arrived behind the wind by less than a minute, hitting the canal flat.

The tender appeared at the channel's far end, moving fast, the pilot reading the same sky. She brought the bow around hard and came in square. The rope went over the cleat, hull pressed in, the repaired board took the load without shifting, without speaking. The pilot stepped off already in motion - already moving toward the covered shed, already glancing up at the masts as the second gust started to build. She did not look at the board. Nobody asked me anything.

The quay lights dipped. Held. Dipped again. The generator's rhythm had gone uneven - present, then halved, then present - a counting-down sound underneath the rain.

I did not open the notebook. The eight sheets stayed where they were left. The canal was rising against its banks in small surges, and Lano remained pressed to my side, ears flat, watching the masts.

The storm was only starting.

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