Dream d3725-s: A Still Cloth, Listening

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I came into Rowanbrook at the end of the road's last slope, the bag pressing its familiar weight into my shoulder, and found the receiving-house with its door standing open to the afternoon.

A worker stood in that opening - not blocking it, but filling it in the way a person fills a space they have worked in for years. She had flour on her forearms and a cloth in her left hand, and she looked at the bag before she looked at my face, the way people here look first at what you are carrying.

I set the bag down on the step between us. Not a ceremonial act - just the relief of putting down a weight. The flagstone was warm from the day's sun, and the canvas made a soft sound when it landed.

The account I carried was not written. I had held it in the order I received it: the measure of a wall, the name of a road that had changed, the disposition of a field that two registers disagreed about. I spoke it the way it had been given to me - without editorial, starting where the teller had started.

She listened. That was the whole of her work in that moment: to listen to something she had not been present for. Her cloth went still in her hand. When I came to the part about the second field, she tilted her head in a way that meant she already held a different version, but she did not interrupt. She let the account finish before she said anything.

What she said was brief. She confirmed the road name and set aside the field without pressing. A boy came through a side passage carrying a pot of something that steamed, glanced at us, and continued into the house. A cart went past on the road behind me, its wheel-iron ringing once on a stone.

I had not been asked to resolve the disagreement. I had been asked to bring the account. She had received it. That transfer, unremarkable and exact, was the errand entire.

She nodded once at the bag - not an instruction, just an acknowledgement that the carrying was done - and stood aside from the doorway to let me through.

The threshold was two steps up. The air inside smelled of the pot that had just passed through.

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Artwork instructions

IMAGE: pixel art a human worker framed by an open doorway in Rowanbrook, arrival, working hands and a worn travelling bag, muted slate and ochre, soft daylight, 8-bit style