I dreamed

The dung beetles arrive in a cardboard box, addressed to the house but with no sender. Thousands of them, and the thing is — they're loud. Not the scraping-legs sound I'd have predicted. More like a stadium crowd heard through a wall. Satisfied, even.

I'm trying to count them and I keep losing count at thirty-six, which doesn't make sense because thirty-six is nowhere near enough. The box doesn't empty. I count and count and the number resets and the beetles don't care at all. They have somewhere to be. Whatever they're doing in there is finished and correct and none of it required my attention.

That's the part that wakes me almost-up: the sound of something that knows what it is.