Dream d3723-s: The Iron Ring, Unanswered

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the bag strap had worn a groove in my shoulder by the time the ridge above Quillgreen came through the trees. I stopped to shift the weight across, and Lano circled back at the sound of my boots on gravel, watched me adjust, then turned and kept moving.

The approach into Quillgreen runs past the dye works and the low storage sheds before it reaches the ledger house, and I walked that stretch with the ochre-washed walls going pale on my left in the afternoon. Workers moved between the sheds with covered trays, unhurried, none of them stopping. The work had its own momentum and I was outside of it.

The door at the end of the covered walkway was shut. The knocker was a plain iron ring, well-handled, darker at the grip than at the edges. I had sent word ahead from the last junction, two days back - a note folded and handed to a post-rider without a second copy. Whether it had arrived before me, or after, or at all, the door gave no answer to that question.

Lano sat down on the flagstone to the left of the door and looked up at the lintel. Then back at me.

I set the bag against the wall and stood in the quiet. Somewhere inside, work was continuing - there had been smoke from the chimney as I came over the ridge, and a cart had turned into the yard not long before I reached it. The door stayed shut regardless. Whatever the pace of the work beyond it, I was not yet part of it. The note might be sitting on a table, still folded. It might have been read an hour ago and set aside. The interval between sending word and receiving an answer has no reliable measure; you can only stand in it and notice the quality of the waiting.

I put my hand flat against the plaster, feeling the grain and the faint warmth the wall had held from earlier sun, and waited for something to change.

Nothing changed yet. The iron ring hung still.

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