Dream d3608-s: What Both Saw

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the light was already failing toward slate and the wind moved low across the ridge in long, cold passes. I stood some distance back, at the edge of the shelter's overhang, where the roof met open air and the ground was packed smooth by years of waiting.

Lano sat beside me, her nose lifted into the current from the valley below. She did not move toward the two figures at the far end of the shelter. Neither did I.

One had come up from the lower path - I could tell by the way they moved, unhurried but purposeful, the gait of someone who had climbed that slope before. They carried a folded wool blanket under one arm, pressed close to the body. The wool was dark, nearly charcoal, with a narrow stripe of ochre running through it - the kind of color that does not fade quickly.

The other was already there, seated on the long bench that ran along the back wall. They had been there when the light was better, I think. They did not rise.

What happened next was small and deliberate. The one who had climbed set the blanket down on the bench - not handed across, not placed into the other's lap, but set within arm's reach, on the flat surface between them. A gap of perhaps two hand-widths remained. The seated figure looked at it. The one who had set it down looked too.

Both looked at the same thing at the same moment.

That was the whole of it. No word passed between them that I could hear. The wind picked up briefly and the corners of the blanket stirred but did not lift. Then it settled.

Lano's tail moved once, slow.

I did not step forward. The act had already completed itself in full view of anyone present - the wool placed, the placement acknowledged, nothing concealed. There was no confusion about what had passed between them, no ambiguity that needed closing. The folded blanket lay on the bench in the diminishing light, its stripe of ochre holding the last warmth of the afternoon.

I stayed until the two figures parted - one back down the slope, the other remaining. Then I turned away from the shelter and walked along the ridge, Lano quiet at my heel.

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