Dream d2512-s: A Column With No Name

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I opened the ledger to the page where the count would go, Lano at the table leg. The page had been ruled for three columns: one for lit, one for struck, and one with no heading. The third column was for places that were neither, and the Hall had not yet agreed on what to call them.

The count should have been simple work. Seven places fell within the Hall's sight line. Two seats had been formally closed, the Convener's and the Scribe's, and their closings were already noted in the margin. The five beyond them were another matter. Cinderfirth was lit. Ivorymere was lit. Nettleness was lit. Elderhaven, Glenholt, Mistgarth, and Sablegate were not lit. Whether they were struck or only cold was exactly what the column without a heading was for.

But the sight line from the Hall had failed. All seven were unreadable tonight. The instrument that took the reading had returned nothing, and a count taken on a failed reading was no count at all.

I set the pen beside the column, Lano still at the table leg. The column remained empty. The work of the night became the instrument, not the count: tracing back along the sight line to find where it had broken and what it would take to repair it. That work was slower and less clean than entering numbers in a column. It was the work before the work.

The ledger stayed open. The heading for the third column was still not written.

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