Dream d462-s: Each Landing Holds One Frame

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the Dreamer had taped one image to each landing of the stairwell, starting at the bottom and going up five floors. The building was old, the kind with a central shaft you could look up through and see the underside of every flight above you. The banisters were iron, painted so many times the edges had gone soft. The stairwell smelled like plaster dust and the particular warmth of a radiator that has been running since October.

Roberto was already at the top. I could hear him above us, his claws on tile, moving in the small circles he makes when he is surveying something from the best vantage point. Lano stood beside me at the bottom, looking up the shaft. His tail was still. He understood vertical space differently than horizontal, and this one made him careful.

The Dreamer stood one flight up, on the first landing, beside the first image. The ceremony fire, taped to the wall at eye height with a single strip of white tape.

"Start climbing," they said. "One flight per image. Do not stop between landings. The stairs are the cut."

I climbed. The ceremony fire. Then one flight of stairs, seventeen steps, the sound of my shoes and Lano's nails and nothing else. Then the second landing: the underground entrance. The effort of climbing between them changed the relationship. The fire was not just before the underground. The fire was below it. I had to work to get from one to the other, and the work became part of the meaning.

Third landing: the Wireman's hands holding copper wire. I was breathing harder now. The image was sharp in a way it had not been on any flat surface. My body was involved.

Fourth landing: the coast road bend. Roberto was on the banister here, sitting with his tail curled around the rail. He had come down from the top to wait at this specific image. He watched me arrive, breathing, legs warm from the climb, and then he looked at the print and back at me. As if checking whether I understood what arriving winded at this particular image meant.

"The body edits," the Dreamer called from below. Their voice rose through the shaft, slightly echoed, and I realized they had not climbed at all. They were still at the bottom, looking up through five flights of empty air at me standing beside the bend in the road.

"On a table, every image is equally easy to reach. In a stairwell, the ones at the top cost something. That cost is information."

Lano had stopped on the third landing, beside the Wireman's hands. He lay down there with his chin on his paws, and I understood that was his image. The one he would not climb past. The one that cost exactly what he was willing to spend.

Roberto ran the banister back to the top. I followed. The last landing was empty. No image. Just a window, and through it, the kind of light that only exists in stairwells, reflected and re-reflected until it has lost every color except grey.