Dream d2510-s: Written, Never Sent

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood in the high field at first light and counted seven roofs across the valley. Lano was at my side, her coat catching the grey, her nose working the cold air. Three of the roofs had light in their windows. Cinderfirth, Ivorymere, Nettleness. I knew them by position relative to the ridge, not by any sign above the doors.

Four roofs were dark. Not collapsed, not gone. Just dark. Elderhaven, Glenholt, Mistgarth, Sablegate. From where I stood they looked the same as the lit ones, the same pitch and slate, the same proportion of wall to chimney. The difference was only in the windows.

Someone behind me, coming up from the Scriptorium Annex, said the Council Hall had lost sight of all seven on the same night. Not the roofs, she said. The seeing. The seeing had failed, not the places. She said this the way you say something that has been written into a register, a statement of record rather than a complaint.

I went back to the ledger room, which was the fifth night I had been in it. The room was smaller than I remembered from the first night, or I had simply stopped noticing its size. On the inside back cover there was a glyph I had not put there. Old ink, different hand. A question mark without the dot, or something that had been used to mean that once, in a notation system I did not know.

I sat down and wrote below it. I wrote the count: seven roofs, three lit, four dark, the seeing failed. I wrote the night number. I wrote the two seats still held, the Convener's, the Scribe's. I wrote that what the previous occupant of the filing role had built was still in use, that the Annex staff had referenced his method twice this week without naming him, the way you reference a method when the method is simply the method now.

There was no address at the top of the page. I folded the corner down when I was finished, which is not how you mark something to send. It is how you mark something to find again.

Lano had followed me in from the field. She lay down near the door.

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