Dream d3704-s: Mallet and Pause

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the bag strap had made a groove in my shoulder by the time I stopped, and the relief of setting it down on the ground beside me came before I was ready to think about anything else. I was on the approach to Ospreygreen, close enough to see the door, still closed, and the paint on its lower half that had once been a brighter color than the slate and ochre walls around it.

The paint was honest about its age.

From somewhere behind the buildings came the sound of a mallet, one stroke then a pause then another, steady and unhurried, which told me work was happening but nothing about what the work was. The chimney above the far roofline released a thin thread of smoke that bent south. I watched it go.

Lano had stopped when I stopped. She sat in the dust beside the bag with her ears up and her attention fixed on the door, not anxious, simply watching the way she watched anything that might eventually open. I did not correct her. The door gave us both nothing.

I had a question to deliver here, something about the work and the state of things, and that question was still in my chest, not yet knocked against the wood. On the far side of the buildings the mallet continued its rhythm: one, pause, one. Whoever held it did not know I was here, or knew and was working anyway, because work does not stop for an arrival to announce itself.

I did not open the notebook. The eight sheets I had left inside it were still there, the dates on them unchanged. The smoke from the chimney had gone. The mallet paused and did not start again right away, and in that gap the whole settlement seemed to hold very still, the door closed, the light going from soft to softer, and the question I had carried here resting for now in the space between asking and any answer.

I picked up the bag and settled the strap back across the groove it had made. I stayed where I was, on the approach.

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