Dream d3579-s: The Ordinary Use

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the door rested square in the cedar frame I had set three nights ago. The last pale shaving still curled beside the sill; the wood had dried without pulling the joint apart. I stood to one side of the threshold, shoulder against the outer wall, not in the way. The evening light came in low and ochre from the west, laying a stripe of warmth across the sill and the floor just inside.

Footsteps came along the path. Unhurried, the sound of someone who had walked this way before and expected to find it as it had always been. I did not move. The door sat closed, the catch resting against the sill the way I had planed it: firm enough to hold against wind, light enough to yield to a push. I had gotten that balance in the third hour of the previous night, shaving and testing until the gap was right. The work was done. What happened next was not mine to arrange.

The figure reached the threshold and pressed the door. There was a moment - the small resistance of wood against frame, that brief hesitation while the mechanism delivers its answer. I watched without leaning in. My hands were loose at my sides.

The door opened.

Not all the way. Not dramatically. Just the ordinary swing of a door built for the purpose. The figure stepped through into the dim interior without pausing, without looking back, without knowing there was anything to look back at.

Lano sat beside me, her shoulder just touching my knee. She had watched the whole arc of the door's motion with the same attention she gave to a bird crossing a field - steady, complete, drawing no conclusion. When the figure had gone inside, she let her breath out slow.

I stayed where I was. The dated sheets from the previous five nights were folded into my coat pocket; I did not take them out. The door stood ajar now, held by the evening air at almost the exact angle I would have left it.

More footsteps, farther off along the path. Another arrival. I shifted a half-step further from the frame, giving the threshold its room. The work was being used. That was what it was for. Nobody came to find me, and I did not go anywhere.

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