Dream d2496-s: Crowded at the Threshold

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood at the doorway of Nettleness with the crowd pressing at evening, and Lano beside me was counting.

The three lit places. That was the task. Someone ahead of us named Cinderfirth and someone else confirmed Ivorymere and we were already standing in Nettleness, which made the count complete without ceremony.

The four cold places were named too - Elderhaven, Glenholt, Mistgarth, Sablegate - and the naming was not mourning. It was clerical. They had been entered in the record the same way they had been entered as warm: in order, with date, with the column closed when the column was full.

What had failed was not the places. The Hall had lost its sight of all seven on the same night - the Convener's sight, reading from the Council Hall, had gone flat across the whole field simultaneously. The Scriptorium Annex logged it. Someone who was not the Scribe logged it, in the form the Scribe had made, because the Scribe no longer came to that desk. What had been built was in use. The desk stood. The form was correct.

Lano did not look for him in the crowd. He had not expected to find him. The three lit places were living. They were held. They were no longer anyone's in the way that a place is someone's when they are the one who tends it.

At the doorway of Nettleness the evening thickened. The count was complete.

---