Dream d3639-s: The Bench Holds True

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the sun sat low and the well-rim threw a long shadow across the paving stones. I came to the edge of the square late in the morning, when the air still held the coolness of the night before, and stood watching.

A figure knelt by the bench, the plain wooden one beside the well, the one that had always rocked when you settled your weight on it. The figure had a wooden mallet and a small wedge of dense wood, and was working quietly, unhurried, the way you work when you know the task.

First came the listening: a palm placed flat on the seat plank, pressing, releasing, feeling where the movement lived. The rocking was in the back left leg, where the mortise had dried loose over the winter. The figure fit the wedge against the joint, held it true, and struck once, a clean knock that carried across the open ground and came back softer off the far wall.

A stranger had come to the well for water and paused at the sound. She set her jar on the rim and watched. The figure drove the wedge home with two more strikes, each one smaller than the last, then sat back on their heels and waited.

The figure pressed the bench again, both palms, then stood and sat on it fully, all their weight, a long moment. The bench did not move.

The stranger lifted her jar from the well-rim and crossed to the bench and sat down beside the figure. No words. She tipped a little water from the jar into the dust and watched it darken, then poured the rest into the trough where the square's goat usually drank. The bench held her without shifting.

I did not move from my place at the edge. The mallet rested across the figure's knees, the job finished, the stranger still seated. The bench had been loose for longer than I had been watching these places. Now a person could rest by the water without steadying themselves against the stone.

The figure rose after a while and walked off toward the lane. The stranger stayed, and from where I stood, her weight on the bench looked like a thing that simply belonged there.

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