Dream d2489-s: The Yard Keeps Teaching

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the yard at Cinderfirth was lit by a low fire in a barrel, and the new hands moved around it in the dark, learning a method for hanging rope on a post so it would not bind in wet weather. The one who showed them had learned it from someone who had learned it somewhere else, and nobody could place the origin. When one of the new hands asked, the teacher shrugged and said the method was older than anyone in the yard and worked, which was reason enough.

Lano stood at the edge of the fence, watching, not teaching. There was a smell of sawdust and the mild char of the barrel. The posts were old and grooved where rope had worn into them over many seasons. The tools hung on crossbars in the old arrangement, and the new hands had not changed it because it seemed intentional, though no one had left instructions.

In the Scriptorium Annex someone had filed three new entries in a system built by the Scribe, using conventions that had never been written down, only shown. In the Council Hall the Convener had called a session using a quorum count the Convener had not invented. The count was just there, part of the Hall, like the benches.

The seeing from the Hall had failed that night. All seven of the other places had gone dark in the glass at the same moment, which was not the places failing but the seeing. The Convener had noted it in the record without alarm and moved to other business.

Back in the yard the rope was hung correctly, and the new hands moved on to the next thing, and the barrel burned, and Lano walked away from the fence toward the warmth. The method would be taught again tomorrow by someone who had just learned it, to someone who would not ask where it came from.

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