Dream d3571-s: Slipped Stone, Arriving Rain

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the light above the pasture was wrong before it turned dark - ochre where it should have been white, and the shadows under the wall face already pooling deeper than midday ought to allow. I had been standing at the gap since morning, not repairing, only watching the two slipped stones where they rested in the grass below the line.

The wall keeper was already there when I arrived. She carried a metal rod, the kind used to pry and lever, and a cloth bag of smaller tools at her hip. She stood at one end of the gap and looked at the place where the stones had come down. I stood at the other end. Neither of us spoke about who had arrived first.

Then the shepherd came up from the lower field. She had a sounding line coiled over one shoulder and a spare peg hung at her belt. She stepped over the low end of the wall where the gap made it passable and came to stand beside us. She set her tools on top of the wall, not in the grass, and the wall keeper shifted along to give her room at the near stone. That was all the negotiation there was.

Lano had been sitting at my heel. Then her ears went flat.

The wind came first, in a single gust that bent the pasture grasses flat and kept them there. Then the rain - not building, but arriving all at once, the way it does when the ridge holds the cloud and then releases it. In the distance, lower on the slope, the antenna mast was moving. Not swaying the way a mast does in an ordinary gust, but bending - the top arc describing a tight, frightened circle. The cable trench that ran below the outbuilding had filled already, a brown line tracking the curve of the hill.

Lano barked once - sharp, not repeated. She pressed hard against my calf.

Below, near the generator shed, a light came on, went off, came back dim. The shed door was not yet shut. I could see that from the wall.

The shepherd picked up her sounding line without being asked. The wall keeper turned her metal rod in her hands and looked at the gap, then at the sky. The rain was in our faces now and the ochre light had been swallowed entirely. The two stones were still slipped in the grass where they had been all morning.

Nobody moved toward the generator. Nobody moved toward the mast. We stood above the pasture at the wall, and the weather went on arriving.

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