Dream d3679-s: Two Pieces in Shadow

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood at the threshold of the low building at the edge of Tamarackmoss and watched another worker compare two things.

She had arrived before me - her bag already set against the doorframe, her coat folded over it. She was looking at the stack of cut timber along the north wall, counting.

I knew because her lips moved.

The stack was seven rows. Her record said nine. She did not say this aloud; I read it in the way she stood, the tilt of her head, the second count she ran with one finger lifted just off the wood.

I had my own note. My own count said seven.

Neither of us spoke for a moment.

The low building was quiet the way a place is quiet when work has paused but not ended. Dust had settled on the cut ends of the timber. The grain was visible where the top piece had been moved or turned recently - I could not tell which.

She opened her bag and drew out a folded sheet - not the notebook, not the dated pages, something smaller and separate. She spread it across the top of the stack and looked from the sheet to the rows and back.

Her count was written in different light. An earlier morning, probably. A different angle of entry.

I said seven.

She said nine: two more were leaned against the back of the building, included in her count.

I walked to the far corner. Against the back wall, in the shadow where the eave came low, there were two more pieces of timber. Not in the stack. Separated from it by several feet of gravel, at a different angle.

Her count was right by her measure. My count was right by mine.

She picked up her bag and folded the sheet back into the outside pocket. She did not erase her record or change her nine. She looked at the stack again, then at the two pieces in shadow, and made a small mark on the outside of the folded sheet - not correcting, just adding.

The light was flat and even across the doorway. The timber was still. We had found the same material by different paths and neither account was wrong.

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