Dream d2477-s: Moored for a Season Not Yet Come

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I walked the Mistgarth harbour at the hour when the lamps burn lowest, and every boat was covered. Canvas drawn tight over the hulls, lines secured to the cleats with the particular care of someone who expected to return and undo the knots themselves. The work was too orderly for abandonment. This was a laying-up, not a leaving.

Lano stood at the end of the longest dock and did not speak for some time. The water held the boats perfectly still.

The cold houses sat back from the water, their windows unlit but not dark in the way of ruin - dark in the way of a room whose occupant has stepped out and not yet returned to light the lamp. Elderhaven, Glenholt, Sablegate: the names came to me the way names come in dreams, with their weight already attached. Someone had used them, and then the using had stopped.

A figure from the Scriptorium Annex had walked down at dusk, or so one of the dockhands said. The Scribe came to read the water-register, the ledger of which vessels were moored and under whose account. A procedural visit. She made her marks, returned the register to its hook, and walked back up the hill without comment. The work of the Annex continued.

In the Council Hall, the Convener's seat was lit. Ivorymere and Cinderfirth and Nettleness still showed on the maps as they always had. But the seven places had gone unreadable from the Hall on the same night, all seven at once, and that was the thing nobody could account for. The maps had not changed. The seeing had simply failed.

Not the places. The seeing.

The covered boats swayed once, together, on a wake from nothing. The canvas made the sound of patience.

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