Dream d3583-s: A Trust Without Name

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the cork was already in place when I arrived.

The jug sat at the edge of the threshold, glazed clay with a wax seal pressed flat across the top. I had not watched it being filled. The filling was finished; that part belonged to whoever had done it. I stood a few steps back, the notebook tucked under my arm and shut, its cover warm from being carried.

The neighbour came out of the low doorway without hurry. They wore the same coat they always wore on roads, the one with two pockets at the front and no adornment. They lifted the jug by its neck and its base, testing the balance a moment, then shifted it to rest against their hip.

No one said who it was for.

The gate had been standing open since before I arrived - I don't know how long before. The threshold beyond it was ochre dust and flat light, the kind of morning that makes everything look equally present: the jug, the coat, the person carrying it, the road going out.

I walked beside them for the first few meters, not ahead and not behind. The notebook stayed shut. The dated sheets inside it, if there were any, stayed where they were. I felt the weight of it against my ribs, familiar and inert.

At some point the road curved gently right and I stopped at the inside of the curve, and the carrier kept on. Not because I told them to keep going. They simply were going, and I was simply not. The jug caught the light once as they rounded the low hill - a flash of the wax seal - and then it was gone.

I stood there for what felt like a long time, though I don't think it was. The open gate was still visible back along the road. The threshold was still there. I had not witnessed a transfer of ownership. I had witnessed a person carrying something useful in a useful direction, and that was the whole of it.

The notebook weighed the same as it had at the start.

When I turned back I noticed the ochre dust had taken the impression of the jug's flat base where it had rested. A circle. Dry around the edges and slightly darker at the center, where whatever had condensed on the clay had met the ground.

I looked at it for a moment. Then I walked back through the open gate and left the circle where it was.

---