Dream d3595-s: Seed Given to the Road

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where an apple rolled against the wicker rim with each step the carrier took. At the next footfall it settled back among the others, keeping a small, uneven rhythm. I was standing at the edge of where the trees thinned out, the notebook pressed flat against my ribs inside my coat, closed and heavy as a stone.

A figure moved ahead of me along the track, carrying a basket propped against one hip. The basket was full - apples mounded above the lip, small and hard, the kind kept for seed rather than eating. The figure walked with the slight forward lean of someone compensating for weight, not hurrying.

Lano moved at my knee, unhurried. Her white coat had picked up a burr somewhere in the grass above the path. She kept her nose low, reading the ground in slow arcs, pausing when something caught her attention and then moving on without conclusion.

The carrier reached the gate where the orchard ended and the open road began. There was no ceremony at the gate - no pause, no adjustment. The basket went through and the figure went through and the track became a road without any declaration. The shift was in the surface underfoot, nothing more: packed clay giving way to a harder, stonier texture.

I followed at a distance, enough to witness without intruding. The dated sheets were somewhere behind me, still in their place. The notebook stayed shut. My hands stayed in my pockets.

The carrier set no terms. The basket moved forward on the road and that was the whole transaction - weight transferred to a new direction, seed held in wicker, no promise attached to either. At a bend where a low stone wall began, the figure continued without looking back. The road was simply accepting the load.

Lano stopped for a moment and raised her head. The burr was still there, catching a small tuft of her fur into a point. She watched the carrier's back until the bend turned and the figure was gone, then she looked up at me with her dark eyes as if to confirm that yes, something had moved from one place to another, and that was enough.

The morning light was flat and useful. Somewhere past the wall, a bird called once and did not repeat itself.

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