Dream d2467-s: Carried by Four

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the candle on the minute-book table had burned to a nub by the time the count arrived, and the wax had pooled in the shape of nothing in particular.

Lano was already in the side room - not the hall itself, just the annex where they keep the bound books, seven shelves going back to the hall's first season. The Convener read the number aloud and then read it again. The Scribe wrote it down without looking up.

The motion had been small: whether to extend the light-hours in the reading rooms by half an interval, something the hall had decided a dozen times before without ceremony. The count came back at four. The count should have been five.

Nobody named the empty seat. The Convener waited a moment as though the number might correct itself, and when it didn't, she said: carried, by four, and the Scribe wrote that down too.

The minute-book had a column for abstentions. It had a column for absences. It did not have a column for the particular kind of short - not absent, not abstaining, simply no longer on the roll. The Scribe put a dash there. Lano watched the dash go in and said nothing, because there was nothing that needed saying.

Afterward the Convener stood at the window looking toward where Cinderfirth should have been visible on a clear night. The seeing had failed earlier; all seven places had gone dark at once - Cinderfirth and Ivorymere and Nettleness and the four cold ones together, on the same watch. Nobody had an explanation that fit. The Convener said: the lights will return when they return, and the Scribe wrote that down in the notes column, which was not its proper place but was the only space left on the page.

I carried the candle stub out when the room was done, and Lano followed at my heel. The hall was quiet. The vote had passed. The count was short. Both of those things were true and neither canceled the other, and that was the part that stayed with me even as the dream ended - the way four out of five can be a majority and a reminder at the same time, without being either one on purpose.

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