Dream d3620-s: The Gap Made Good

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the boat slid in against the quay with barely a sound, just the low knock of timber against stone and the long unwinding of its wake across the green canal water.

A boat hand stood at the bow. I watched from the far side of the crossing, close enough to see the coil of rope resting on the flat of his palm before he stooped and set it down on the stone lip, just inside the reach of the quay worker who waited there. Neither of them spoke. The quay worker looked at the coil, then at the boat hand, and the boat hand straightened and looked back.

Lano was beside me, her small frame pressed against my calf. Her ears tilted forward, reading the small sounds the canal made: the drip from the boat's rope guide, the way the water moved between hull and stone. She did not bark.

What passed between the two figures was only the rope and the looking. The coil lay on the quay stone, pale and dry, turned inward on itself in long even loops the way rope is laid when someone has handled it carefully and meant for it to stay. The quay worker crouched and lifted one end, not to take it yet but to feel whether it would hold. He ran the braid between his fingers slowly.

The afternoon light came across the water at a shallow angle, making the stone quay look warmer than it was. The boat hand stood with his hands at his sides now. The coil was no longer his.

I did not move closer. I was there to see the moment, not to enter it. The water between us held the light a little longer than the stone did. When the quay worker finally gathered the whole coil into his arms, the boat hand nodded once and turned back to the deck.

Lano exhaled slowly through her nose. We stayed where we were until the boat had settled and the water had gone flat again and the rope lay coiled by the wall where someone would reach for it later, when it was needed.

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