Dream d3614-s: The Weight Already Counted

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the millstone's low, continuous hum reached me across the field before the structure itself came into view. I stood where the shadow of the mill's roof cut cleanly across the packed earth, and in that strip of shade I waited for nothing particular, watching the way the light collected amber on the threshed stubble beyond.

Two figures moved in the lane that ran beside the mill's near wall. I recognized them by their work, not by their faces: one carried the marks of the stone interior - a fine pale powder settled into the creases of his sleeves, his hands pale-wristed and certain in their movements. The other stood with the stillness of someone who has already measured the morning's requirements and found that waiting is simply another part of the work.

The mill worker set a small sack down on the low stone step between them. He did not release it with ceremony; he simply let it come to rest where the other could reach it. The movement was complete in itself - a slight bow of the wrist, the weight transferring from his grip to the earth, the rough cloth settling into its own shape.

The baker looked at the sack. He did not immediately take it. There was a moment - several heartbeats long - when both of them simply held the fact of it in common. The sack had been carried. It sat between them. The grain inside was real grain, countable if one wished to count it, sufficient or insufficient by some reckoning that both already carried.

Then the baker's hand closed around the neck of the sack and lifted it, and that was the handoff completed.

Lano had found me at some point during all of this. She sat close against my knee, watching the two figures with the focused attention she gives anything that involves the precise movement of hands. Her nose worked once, twice - she could smell the grain from where we stood, I was sure of it - but she made no move toward the lane.

The millstone went on humming. The baker folded the sack's neck down once and tucked it under his arm. The mill worker turned back toward the entrance. Neither spoke, or if they did I was too far to hear it, and the sound of the mill would have taken any words before they traveled.

I watched until both were gone - one inward, one away - and the step stood empty in the soft daylight, and the ochre dust settled back to where the air had stirred it.

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