Dream d3654-s: Bag on the Threshold

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the worker had not moved the bag. She stood in the entrance to the receiving room with her back to the passage, and the bag sat against the wall to her right where someone had left it. The leather had gone soft at the corners and dark along the strap from long use, and the clasp at the top had been undone but not opened.

She was not looking at the bag. She had a length of cord in both hands and was working it against a curved iron hook mounted at chest height, feeding the cord through and drawing it back, checking the tension by feel. The motion was slow and practiced - pull, feel, release, pull again. Light came in from above, ochre and indirect, the kind that lands on walls rather than floors.

Lano sat near the doorway's far edge where the light reached the flagstones. She had her nose tilted toward the bag. She did not go to it; she sat and tilted and let her ears settle forward, then lost interest and looked up at the ceiling instead.

The cord caught once on something inside the hook housing and the worker stopped, held the position, worked two fingers into the gap without looking away from the middle distance. Whatever was caught released. She continued.

The bag stayed where it was. No one had taken out what was inside. No one had said whether the contents were what had been ordered or whether they needed to go back. The clasp hung open at the top, the leather flap resting against the body of the bag, not quite closed and not quite open.

Later another worker came through and stepped around the bag without stopping. She nodded at the one with the cord. The one with the cord nodded back. Neither spoke about the bag.

I stayed near the wall opposite it. The cord work continued. The light shifted by degrees, and the shadow of the strap moved slowly across the flagstones until it merged with the larger dark gathering in the room's corners.

The clasp remained open. The cord remained under test. The bag remained beside the wall with its softened corners, holding whatever it held, waiting for someone to decide.

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