Dream d3611-s: Before the Carrier Came

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood in the lane beside the mill and saw the flour bin standing open at the back wall, its lid propped on the lip of a water barrel, the inside pale and dry. Flour dust had settled in the seam where the wood met the floor. There was no grist in it, no residue of recent grinding, only the ghost of what had been milled weeks before.

The wheel was turning. I could hear it, the slow knock of water lifting and releasing the paddles just around the corner of the stone building. The millstone would be running too, though I could not see it from where I stood. It was ready. The bin was not.

I did not speak to anyone about it. I walked the length of the lane and saw the handcart parked against the fence with its wheel cocked slightly on a stone, the cart empty. I saw the sacks stacked under the overhang of the granary door, one of them smaller than the rest, slumped to one side in a way that said it was not full. The others were bound at the neck. That one was not.

The need was there in the gap between what was running and what was supplied. A person would arrive with it. That was the shape of what was about to happen. I did not know who. I stood in the lane and felt the particular quiet of a moment not yet resolved.

A sparrow landed on the fence post to my left, regarded the lane, and flew off again low across the ruts. The light came through the mill's single high window and laid a pale stripe along the stone floor inside. The air was cold along the ground and warm at shoulder height where the stone had been holding the day.

Then I heard the footsteps. They were not hurried. The small sack came around the corner of the granary in someone's arms, held against the chest the way you carry something light but awkward, the fabric bunched at the top in a fist. The carrier did not look at me. They went straight to the bin and set the sack down on the ledge first, untwisted the neck of it, and let the grain run in a slow pale arc into the darkness below.

The sound of it was dry and continuous and then it stopped.

The bin lid came down. The mill kept turning.

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