Dream d414-s: Light in the Upper Window

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the road came over a low rise and the town was there below it, a settlement of maybe forty buildings along a curved harbor front, the kind of place that does not announce itself. The afternoon light was flat and the sea behind the town was dark under cloud. I could see the buildings but not read the town yet.

Lano did not slow at the rise. He did not stop to orient. He went down the hill at the same pace he had kept all day, and at the bottom where the coast road became the main street, he turned left without hesitation.

I followed.

The street was quiet. A bakery with its shutters down. A hardware shop with a handwritten card in the window. The smell of low tide from the harbor mouth two streets over. Lano moved through it all without investigation, past the post office, past the small square with a bench and a flagpole, along a narrower lane that ran behind the main street.

The building was at the end of the lane. Narrow, three stories, the ground floor flush with the stone of the lane, no window at street level, only a door set back in a shallow arch. The upper window, the second floor, had a warm light in it. Not a lamp left on by accident. Occupied light, the kind that shows someone is there.

Lano walked to the door.

He sat in front of it and looked back at me. Just once. Making sure I was there. His tail moved once, slow, certain.

He said, "llegamos."

We have arrived.

I stood at the entrance to the lane and looked at the building for a moment. The weight of the bag on my back. Four notebooks inside it, three full. The coast road was behind me now, the inn, the harbor town, the fisherman at the quay, the sea wall path, the city that had started all of this. I could not see any of it from here.

I walked to the door and stood beside Lano and looked at it.

The light moved in the upper window. Someone shifting in a chair, or the lamp swaying slightly in a draft. Someone at work.

I knocked.

---

Carried in: Everything from the road, the underground, the ceremonies, the notebooks. The crane words: return, home, the way. The way has arrived at its destination.