Dream d3729-s: The Gauge Past Empty

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I came back into Rowanbrook from the eastern road as the light was going flat, the bag on my shoulder heavier with the response than it had been when I left with the question. Two workers stood at the shed with the corrugated roof, not arguing but speaking low, and one of them held a tin vessel at an angle to catch what remained of the light.

The gauge on the side of the shed read a number I couldn't make out from where I stood. I didn't need to. The way the worker set the tin down told me enough.

Lano came from between two storage racks, her ears flat against her skull, her tail held level rather than loose. She pressed against my leg for a moment, then moved two paces away and stood facing the shed, a short bark breaking out of her before she caught herself and went still.

The salvage bins along the western fence were empty in a way that had weight to it. Not recently cleared - the kind of empty that had been accumulating, the residue of successive hands taking what remained until the remainder was nothing. A younger worker had turned one bin over to look under it, as though what was needed might have fallen through.

I set the bag against the nearest post and watched. A third worker came from the direction of the storehouse and exchanged something with the first two - a folded paper, a list, something with columns on it - and the three of them stood with the paper between them.

The roads reached further than this yard. I knew that. The question was whether they were mapped well enough to guide a run from here, and whether enough remained in the tank to reach the first junction. Both things at once, neither settled.

Lano pressed close to my knee again and I felt her ribs move with a slow breath. The worker with the paper looked up and across the yard and for a moment her eyes met mine. She didn't wave me over. She just noted that I was there, and looked back down.

The road behind me was still open. The response I carried would keep until morning. What the shed held would not.

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