Dream d3640-s: The Handle Stays

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I held a short-handled scraper in both hands and felt its familiar weight just before setting it down on the ledge.

The first shared square beyond the road lay open in soft daylight - ochre flags underfoot, the low bench along the far wall still cool in the morning shadow. I was standing near the center when the other one turned to go. No ceremony: a look at the bench, a look at the scraper, and the first carrier simply walked. Past the corner post, down the first long stretch. Gone from sight before the last footfall faded.

I did not call after. The scraper sat on the ledge where it had been placed, and the work it pointed to needed no translation. A crack had opened along the north edge of the flags, the joint widened over the cold season, and I went to it. Down to my knees on the ochre stone, pressing mortar into the gap with the scraper's flat blade, smoothing until the seam sat flush. The material had a cold, clean resistance - the kind that tells you when the joint is full.

Light moved across the square as I worked, the shadows shortening from the wall. At some point the bench creaked - a slow settling under new weight. A stranger had come in from the far entry, found the bench by its position, and sat. Not asking for the work to stop or be explained. Just sitting, watching the flags in the way someone does when they are not in a hurry.

I kept working. The north edge took most of the morning: four courses of joints, nine individual gaps, the last one shallower than it looked. When I finished the last, I sat back on my heels and looked at the row. Clean and level. The frost would not find them.

The stranger was still there when I stood. We did not speak. I set the scraper back on the ledge in the same position the first carrier had left it - not out of sentiment, but because the ledge was the obvious place and the work might need it again before the day was done.

The square held its proportion in the slant of the afternoon. The bench held the stranger. The scraper held its edge. That was the whole of it, and in the way of these dreams it felt like more than enough.

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