Dream d3724-s: The Door That Keeps Its Counsel

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the road ran flat for the last quarter mile into Quillgreen, which is the kind of approach that gives you time to see a door is shut before you arrive at it. I saw it from a distance: the doorway closed, the wood painted over once in ochre and wearing through to slate underneath. I kept walking.

Six nights on the road, the bag getting no lighter. Lano had come ahead of me on the flat stretch and was already at the threshold when I arrived, sitting with her ears raised, reading the gap under the door.

I set the bag down and stood beside her.

Somewhere inside the building, the receiving work was happening - or had stopped, or was going at a pace I had no way to measure from this side. I had sent a request for news three days back, through the usual channels. No reply had reached me.

The wall to the right of the door showed the wear of regular use - a smear of pale material at shoulder height, the kind of mark that accumulates from years of hands steadying themselves as the door swings. I did not take it as information. Lano's nose moved along the gap at the threshold and then up, reading whatever draft came through.

A worker rounded the far corner of the building, carrying a flat board of materials on one shoulder, and crossed the yard without looking up. The side entrance swallowed them. Another appeared at an upper window, stood there a moment, moved back into the interior.

The notebook in my bag was shut. The eight sheets I had dated and left where I had left them - still there, in the place I had left them.

I stood beside the closed door. The ochre paint, up close, had a texture to it, small ridges where it had dried fast in warm weather. The light was even and soft. Lano settled back on her haunches.

My request for news was still out there, somewhere in the interval between the asking and any answer.

I did not knock a second time.

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