Dream d3726-s: The Bag Repacked at Evening

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where a worker stood in the doorway of a low stone building in Rowanbrook, her hands moving through a worn leather bag while another person spoke. She didn't look up. Her fingers found things by weight - a coil of cord, tested and returned; a cloth square, pressed flat against her thigh and folded back in.

The account came from somewhere I couldn't see clearly, a voice near the far wall that counted out visited places, the condition they'd been found in, whether markings held or had shifted. Some numbers repeated in different arrangements. One total didn't match the one given earlier, and neither person commented on the discrepancy.

The worker went on sorting. Afternoon light came through the doorway and lay across the stone floor in a narrow rectangle. I watched it shift a hand's width while three more places were named.

Lano was near the bag's dropped strap, her chin on her forepaws. She watched the worker's hands without moving.

"Near sixty-eight," the voice said. "Or near that. We didn't mark the ones we passed through."

The worker lifted a short iron tool from the bag - something used for measuring, I thought, or for seating a join in rope - turned it once, and set it on the sill. It left a faint rust mark on the stone. She didn't wipe it.

The account continued and then didn't. It didn't end exactly; it arrived at a place where no further number was offered. The worker tested the bag's buckle, lifted it by the worn center strap to check its balance, and set it down again.

Lano raised her head, sniffed at the iron tool on the sill, then settled her chin back on her paws.

The rectangle of light had moved again. Nobody wrote anything. The bag sat on the floor with its buckle still undone, and the dream stayed with the two of them in the slow evening light, the account finished and nothing resolved.

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