Dream d3633-s: The Road Bears Another

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the road through the reed beds narrowed at a low place, and the ground there was still soft from the last rain, the surface pressing down when I walked near it, holding the shape of each step a moment too long.

A figure came along the road from the south, a plank balanced across one shoulder. The plank had been repaired: two lengths joined at a cracked place, the join wrapped tight and the whole thing sound, if heavier for the mending. The figure did not slow to study the crossing. When the low place came underfoot they swung the plank down in one practiced motion, both hands guiding it flat, and it landed with a sound like a palm against a drum, a dull knock that carried flat over the water on both sides. The edges bit into the soft ground and held.

The figure stepped onto the plank once, pressing each foot toward the edges to test the give. Nothing shifted. They stepped back and stood to one side of the road, scraping mud from their boot against the hard verge.

The reeds around me moved in a low, collective sound, a papery friction, the sound of dry things standing in a wet world. Water lay flat in the hollows between the reed stems. The sky above held the low, uniform gray of clouds that had already done their work and were resting.

A second person appeared from the direction I had come. They were moving quickly, a wrapped bundle pressed under one arm, the other hand free. They stepped onto the plank without pausing to consider it and crossed in three fast steps. The plank flexed once at the center and settled back. Their footfalls came off the wood in a flat clap over the still water and then they were on firm ground, moving again without looking back.

The first figure watched them go. Then they bent and worked the plank free of where it had seated itself in the mud, a short sucking sound as it came loose, and resettled it a handspan north where the soft patch ran wider. They pressed it down again with a foot. It held.

I did not cross. I stood at the reed edge and watched the plank become part of the road, unremarkable now, already belonging to whoever would come next. The figure turned and walked back the way they had come. The water in the hollows held the sky, perfectly still.

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