Dream d3716-s: Twice Around the Pin

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the buckle on my travelling bag had been mended with a length of dark cord, wound twice around the broken pin and knotted flat. I noticed it while my hands were already inside the bag, searching for something else, and I stopped to look at it properly.

The response quarter of Kestrelfall was quiet that morning. A worker sat on an upturned crate near the far wall, eating without hurry, a piece of bread broken in two. She watched me the way people watch things they are not responsible for - curious and at ease. I nodded and she nodded back.

I had been thinking about a practical matter: whether to go back through the passages or take the longer way out through the courtyard, where the surface was better and the distance greater. Both routes ended at the same place. I kept turning it over, not from indecision exactly, but because the question felt like it had a right answer I had not reached yet.

The cord on the buckle was ochre-colored where it had picked up dust from the slate floors. Someone had done this repair recently - the knot was clean, the cord not yet frayed at the ends. I did not know who. I ran my thumb across the knot once, then let the bag flap fall closed.

The worker with the bread finished eating and stood. She crossed the room without looking at me and passed through the opening at the far end, her footsteps even on the stone. I heard nothing after that.

I stood with my hand on the bag and made the smaller decision: I would wait a little longer before moving, and check the strap once more outside where the daylight was better for seeing such things. The eight sheets were still where they had been left. The notebook was still closed. Nothing had changed in the room except that the worker was gone and I was still there, and the cord on the buckle was a fact that had simply arrived in my hands while I was looking for something else.

Lano pressed against my ankle. I set my hand on her back for a moment, feeling her warmth through my palm, and then I picked up the bag.

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