Dream d2473-s: Pieces Left for Other Tables

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I was standing on Glenholt's upper landing, and the board game was still there.

Someone had left it mid-play. The pieces were set out with intention - not abandoned in haste, but paused at a moment that had felt temporary at the time. The cards fanned at the edges of the board. A token sitting two squares from wherever it had been trying to reach. The kind of pause that expects return.

Lano was there, not playing. Sitting on the top step with his back to the banister, looking at the board the way you look at a stopped clock.

The landing had not gone cold in the way Elderhaven had gone cold, or Mistgarth, or Sablegate. Those places had closed. Their fires were out and their thresholds unlit. Glenholt's upper landing was different: it was still warm from recent use, still smelled like the game had been played in it that afternoon, but the players had found other tables. They had not come back for their pieces. They did not know they were not coming back.

From somewhere below there was a voice reading from a ledger - not loudly, not for an audience. Accounting. The Scriptorium Annex had logged seven places by region and office, and the log said the seeing had failed. All seven at once, which was not what usually happened. Usually they went one at a time, each for its own reason. This was a different kind of failure: not any single gate closing, but the lens itself going dark on the same night across all of them.

The Council Hall had noted it. The Convener's mark was in the log beside each name. Not removing them - they remained listed, remained seated on the map. The Scribe's records were still there too, still accurate, still referenced by people who came to look things up. Cinderfirth. Ivorymere. Nettleness. Their lights were still on. The Student had built them carefully, and careful things stay standing even after the builder has left the table.

That was the difficult part.

Lano picked up one of the game pieces. Turned it over. Set it back in exactly the same square it had come from.

The game was not finished. It had simply been left at a moment that was no longer reachable, because the people who knew which move came next had found other tables, and the people who remained did not know they were the ones who would have to decide whether to play on, or pack it away, or leave it.

We left it.

---