Dream d600-s: Between the Gates

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the rain had been falling on stone for hours and the study smelled of wet wool and old paper. Lano was pressed against my ankle. The notebooks were all open on the desk at once, spread in a fan I had not arranged. I did not know when that had happened.

The Philosopher had been standing at the wall for a long time without speaking. They were looking at what was there: the maps, the sequences, the diagrams I had drawn in other rooms over other months. Their eyes moved slowly from one pinned sheet to the next, not reading but tracing.

They took down a volume from the lower shelf. Thin, cloth-bound, worn at the spine. They opened it to a diagram of a canal system, hand-inked, the waterways in brown and the lock chambers in careful black squares. Then they opened it further and we were inside it.

Stone floor, cold and close-grouted. The smell of iron and wet rope. A fire in a small grate at the far wall, and beside it a desk stacked with ledger books, each one thick as a man's fist. A toll-keeper in a coat with deep pockets was writing, not looking up. The canal outside the window was gray and moving. A boat was coming through the near gate.

I watched the keeper record it: the boat's name, its owner, its cargo, its weight, the fee collected, the time. Each line in the same measured hand. The boat rose slowly as water was let in from the upper level. When the far gate opened, the boat moved through into the higher water without ceremony. The keeper turned a page and waited.

Another boat came. Another line in the ledger. The keeper was not deciding what passed. They were not choosing. They were witnessing passage and writing it down. The canal did the work of moving between levels. The keeper held the record.

Lano was there beside me on the stone, very still.

Then we were back in the study. The Philosopher closed the book and set it with the notebooks, which were already open, already full of their own lines in my own hand.

They looked at the wall for a long time without speaking.

Then: "The shape was always there. You built it from both sides without knowing the middle would close."

Outside, the rain on stone continued. Lano settled his chin onto my foot. I looked at the wall and for the first time did not see separate pieces.