Dream d3663-s: Before the Question Forms

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the bag straps had cut two pale lines into my palms by the time the path levelled. That was how I knew the last hill was behind me - not the view, but the sudden ease in my shoulders and the absence of grade beneath my feet. Lano trotted three steps ahead, her tail carrying a flag of intention I had no reason to doubt.

The approach to Quillgreen runs between fields of cut grass - not fields in the working sense, but cleared ground where something was once grown and nothing is now. The remaining stalks catch the afternoon light at a low angle and hold it. Ochre, mostly. Slate where the shadows gathered in the hollows.

I shifted the bag to my other shoulder and kept walking.

There are workers I know here by the quality of their attention rather than by name. A woman who measures twice before speaking. Another who sets things down on a surface and doesn't pick them up again until they're needed. I had wondered, on the road, whether the work had moved in the weeks I was away - whether the patterns I'd left had held or shifted or been set aside entirely. The wondering had kept me company up the last two hills.

The closed doorway came into view as the path curved. Familiar ochre plaster, familiar shadow pooled at the base. I had not sent word ahead. The eight dated sheets I'd left were in there somewhere, or had been moved, or had served their purpose and become something else entirely. I did not know which.

Lano stopped at the edge of the path and sat, ears tipped toward the building. Her nose worked twice, then stilled.

I came to stand beside her.

The entrance gave back nothing. The windows held their dark glass steadily. Somewhere behind those walls, the work I had been thinking about for five days either waited or did not. I had my hands full of what I'd carried back. The asking was simple - a knock, a question, a request for news - but I stood at the end of the path in the slant light and did not yet make it.

There is a moment before a question is asked when the answer could still be anything. I let that moment run.

---