Dream d2482-s: Dust and the Counted Seat

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the Hall of Sablegate was nearly empty when the tally was called, and still the bench by the window returned a vote. The cushion had a depression in it from years of use, and someone had laid a cloth over the dust without lifting it, so the shape remained - an office that had weight, recorded and permanent, the way a name carved into stone outlasts the hand that carved it.

Lano sat near the base of the bench, ears flat against her skull, watching the far corner where the seeing-glass stood.

The glass was salvaged, the warden had explained once - pulled from a workshop that had closed in Elderhaven before Elderhaven itself went quiet. It was not beautiful; it had been mounted in a frame of bound cord and fitted iron, and the light it drew from a specific lamp had to be trimmed exactly or the image it cast would blur at the edges. The warden trimmed it every evening. She had done so for many years.

Tonight the lamp went wrong.

Not a dramatic failure - no smoke, no crack. The wick inside simply stopped holding, and the light the glass required fell too low, and the image on the far wall went dark. Sablegate first. Then, as if the glass had decided the matter all at once, Elderhaven, Glenholt, Mistgarth - all seven places, gone in the space of a single breath. The seeing did not fail at those places. It failed here, at the source, in Sablegate's own hall.

Lano barked once, sharp and short, then sat with her chin level and her gaze fixed on the warden's hands.

The warden was already moving. She did not panic. She opened the cabinet beneath the glass and lifted out the secondary lamp - the backup - and held it up. It had no oil. She looked at it for a moment with the expression of someone doing arithmetic.

"The Convener's account kept a reserve," said the clerk at the side table, speaking in the past tense without being asked to. "Second drawer, left of the door." He was already crossing to it.

The reserve was there. Three fingers of oil, no more. Enough for tonight, possibly for tomorrow. Not enough for six nights of residency. Not enough to re-establish seeing across all seven places even if the salvaged glass could hold at the lower heat of the backup lamp, which nobody had tested.

Lano had not relaxed. She stood now, weight forward, attention on the door to the courtyard as if something outside was worth watching, though the night beyond the window was simply dark.

The vote on the bench sat counted. The Hall would note it tomorrow, as it noted it every session. The office outlasted the occupant; that was the whole principle of the bench. The warden adjusted the wick and waited for the image to return.

Nothing came through the glass but low amber light and a reflection of the dust on the cushion.

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