Dream d3569-s: Hands Before the Gap

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I crested the rise and saw the long stone wall already in motion.

Someone was at work there before I arrived - crouching at the near end, lifting a stone from a low pile at her feet, turning it in both hands to read its weight and face. The morning light was the color of old ochre. Dew still beaded the grass along the wall's base. I stopped at the edge of the field and did not go closer.

The wall runs level across the ridge above the pasture, and from where I stood I could see the gap - two stones that had slipped, their absence a small wound in the long horizontal line. The worker had not come to it yet. Her hands moved along the intact stretches first: lift, press, check with a palm flat across the seam, move on. No hurry. The sounds that reached me were small - the soft thud of stone settling, a thin line of wind through dry grass, the low movement of animals somewhere in the pasture below.

Lano sat at my ankle, ears canted forward, her nose turning in small arcs to read whatever the air carried from the wall. She made no move toward the worker. Neither did I.

The notebook stayed in my pocket, shut. The eight dated sheets remained folded where they had been left. I did not open anything. I watched the hands - practiced, reading each stone quickly, setting it without waste of motion - and I watched the gap, which waited at its place in the wall like something that had not yet been asked.

The ochre light deepened. The shadow of the wall shortened as the morning worked through its early hour. The worker moved steadily along her line.

"Espera," Lano said softly, almost to herself.

I said nothing. The worker did not look up. The gap stayed open, and I stood at the field's edge and watched the work proceed that had been proceeding long before I arrived.

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