Dream d3688-s: What the Hands Receive

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where Quillhush was quiet the way it gets just before supper when the workers have set down their tools but not yet gathered together. I came through the side passage with my travelling bag over one shoulder, the strap worn where I'd gripped it most of the journey, and found the first worker at the doorway to the sorting room - not quite inside, not quite out, one hand resting on the frame.

She was holding a cloth folded into quarters. She hadn't looked up yet when I stopped.

I took the sheets from the inner pocket of the bag - three pages, folded once, the crease still firm from the journey. I had written down what I'd seen at eight places on the return leg. Not conclusions. Descriptions: the angle of a particular roof, the number of panes in a window, whether a courtyard had standing water or not. The kind of detail that someone at a desk might use to place a thing, or might set aside for later.

I held them out.

She set the cloth down on the sill and took the pages without a word. Her hands were the hands of someone who has handled paper for years - a slight callus on the right thumb, a steadiness in how she turned them over to look at the first line. She didn't read. She looked, in the way you look at something when you need to know its shape before you decide where it belongs.

Lano sat beside the step. She'd come up quietly behind me, and now she was still, watching the worker's hands the way she watches things that move slowly and with intention.

The worker folded the pages along their original crease. She set them on the sill, next to where the cloth had been, and smoothed the edge with one finger.

That was all.

No one had said it was enough. No one had said it wasn't. The eight dated sheets were still on the table inside; I could see the edge of the top one through the gap in the door, but the door was mostly shut. The notebook on the shelf above hadn't moved.

I adjusted the strap of the bag. The worker picked up the cloth again, unfolded it, refolded it along a different crease - a small correction, a habit, something to do with her hands while she thought.

The light in the doorway was the low afternoon kind that makes everything look like it has already been decided, which is not the same as it being decided.

I waited a moment. Then I turned and went back the way I'd come.

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