Dream d2500-s: Every Spine Facing Out

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I was running one finger along the spines - not reading, just counting - and the shelf behind them was full, while Lano waited at my feet. Each ledger matched the next in height and colour and the small notched tab along the top that the Scribe had specified for finding things in the dark. Lano was not finding anything. Lano was counting.

This was the third night of eight in the Scriptorium Annex. The shelf had not been full on the first night. It was full now. The last volume had been set into its place that afternoon, and Lano had not been present for it, but had heard the sound from two rooms away - a soft thump that was also a kind of completion.

The Council Hall stood across the square, its seeing-glass gone dark. Seven places had gone unreadable on the same night: Cinderfirth, Ivorymere, Nettleness, Elderhaven, Glenholt, Mistgarth, Sablegate. Three of them still had lights burning - you could infer that from other signs - but the seeing had failed, not the places. The Hall still held the Convener. The Annex still held the Scribe's work, which was a different kind of holding.

The Scribe's last entry in the last volume had said something about completion. I had read it once and closed the cover and returned the ledger to its position on the shelf, and had not opened it again, while Lano slept on the mat nearby. The cold-glue smell of finished binding had been in the room since then, a smell that was not grief but sometimes shares its rooms.

Nothing had been left half-copied. You could verify this. A person could begin at volume one, follow the index forward through every entry to the final line of the final ledger, and find the whole thing continuous. Lano had not done this. But the trust had been built shelf by shelf over years, and the shelf was now full, and the number at the end of the count was correct, and the Scribe was spoken of in the past tense by people still using what he built, which is a different thing from a monument but sometimes outlasts one.

Lano finished counting. Stepped back. The spines all faced out, each notched tab in its right place, the row complete to the wall.

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