Dream d3719-s: The Unanswered Knock

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the road into Quillgreen curved past a stand of lean birch, and the light on the buildings ahead was the flat, pale kind that comes after noon when cloud has thinned but not cleared. I had been walking since before the last marker stone. My bag had settled into its familiar lean against my back, strap worn to a dull grey at the shoulder, buckle rubbing the same patch it always rubbed.

Lano trotted at my heel. She had been quiet for the last half-mile, her nose low, reading something off the packed-earth verge that I couldn't name. When the first buildings came into sight she lifted her head and her ears went forward, alert but not alarmed.

The gate at the approach was a simple timber affair, unlatched and standing wide. No one at it. I passed through and walked the short lane between two low stone walls. On my left, a stack of ochre-tinted render bags, six of them, unbroken. On my right, a handcart with its handles resting on the ground, the wheel mud-caked from some morning's work I had not witnessed.

The door I had been given to look for was at the end of a short passage between two buildings. Slate-coloured paint, the kind that had once been darker, the kind that fades evenly to a lighter version of itself. I set my bag down against the wall beside it. The stone underfoot was smooth from use.

I knocked. The sound went in and did not come back.

Lano sat at my side. She did not bark. She watched the door with the same settled attention she brought to anything she had decided deserved it.

I had been told there would be word here - not from whom, exactly, not about what, only that word would be waiting. Whether the work inside had kept its own hours, whether it had moved ahead or paused or taken some other shape I could not see from the passage, I didn't know. The door was closed. The request was out there, unreturned.

I picked up the bag again, settled it, and stood.

The handcart in the lane had new mud on one wheel and dried mud on the other, so someone had taken it out that morning and brought it most of the way back. That was something. A window above the left building had a lamp burning in it - not lit against dark, just left on, the way things are left when someone means to return.

Lano pressed against my leg once, then stepped back, watching the lane.

I waited.

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