Dream d2497-s: From Here, All Three

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the high road ran level and dark, and at its far end the land dipped into three separate valleys, each with a light burning in its window. Cinderfirth, Ivorymere, Nettleness - all three visible at once from this one stretch of road, which was the dream's whole argument. Lano walked beside me, unhurried, reading the distances.

We had come from the Hall, where the Convener's seat still held its occupant and the clerks still sorted correspondence into the same trays the Student had designed. No one mentioned the designer. They used the trays. The work of the trays was done correctly, same as always.

In the Scriptorium Annex the Scribe was copying something long and careful, and the lamp on the left was the same lamp, and the inkwell was the same inkwell, and the hand at the pen was not the same hand. That was all.

Someone in the Annex said, without looking up: the seven places went unreadable on the same night. Not the places themselves - the seeing. The instrument failed, not the land it had pointed at. Elderhaven and Glenholt and Mistgarth and Sablegate were still standing, still cold, still their own. The channel had simply closed.

On the high road, Lano sat down at the point where all three windows were visible. The night was clear enough for that. I took out what I had been carrying - a single line, the kind you write when the accounts are settled and there is nothing left to dispute - and I read it aloud to the road and the dog and the three lit places: the work stayed, and the work is not what left.

The windows held their light. Lano turned and started back toward the Hall, and I followed, and the road was the same road in both directions.

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