Dream d3631-s: Carried Before Dawn

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the reeds stood taller than either of us and the path ran soft underfoot, pale clay still holding the cold of the night before.

The path worker moved ahead of me with the plank across one shoulder. It was not new wood. Someone had set two iron pins through a split near one end, their heads flush with the grain, and wrapped the joint with cord that had dried dark. The repair held. I could see where the cord pressed into the wood when he shifted the plank to his other shoulder, a slight give and then the weight settling again.

I walked behind him, not beside him. The notebook was in my coat, closed, and I left it there.

The reed beds opened on both sides in the grey morning light. Dried seed heads caught and released the wind in small passes, a brushing sound that moved up the rows and then stopped. The plank knocked once against a post at the path's edge. He steadied it with one hand and kept walking.

I was not sure where the plank was going. He had not said and I had not asked. There was a section of the boardwalk further on where a gap had been left for weeks, planks stacked to one side waiting. Maybe there. Maybe somewhere else entirely.

The path curved and the reeds closed in tighter. Water stood to the left, still and dark, and our footsteps made no echo there. Ahead, the light was beginning to come through in strips where the reeds thinned, pale strip then another, and the air between them carried the particular chill of something about to lift.

He paused once, shifted the plank again. I stopped too and waited. He looked back along the path rather than at me, checking something behind us, and then he turned forward and went on.

I understood then that whatever the plank was for, it was his to carry there. I had not given it to him and I was not going to receive it back. The work was already in his hands, the route already decided. My walking behind him was just walking. The reed beds held us both for a while in that quiet, and then the path widened at a raised section and he stepped up onto it and the plank rang once against a metal rail and I stopped at the base of the step and watched him go.

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