Dream d2513-s: The Orchard Does Not Fit

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the counter at the Hall's table had been searching the shelf of precedent for two hours, and the lamp above the shelf was burning lower than expected for that hour of the night.

The search was for a comparison case. A count cannot begin until there is a method, and a method cannot be built from nothing; it must be tested against a case already closed, already measured, already understood to have come out right. The counter needed a case about a place that had gone quiet without being struck - no fire, no flood, no declaration - and the shelf had one. It was about an orchard.

The orchard book was old and smelled of it. The counter read it at the table. A holding outside the western districts had stopped bearing fruit. The gate had remained on its hinges. The trees had remained standing. The case had been brought to the Hall because someone could not agree on whether the land was still productive or merely still present. The counter read the method used. Walk the rows. Count what did not ripen. Record against the prior season's yield. Close the case by the ratio.

The counter set the book face-down, then picked it up again and turned it over as though looking at the cover a second time would change something. It would not. An orchard has rows. A row has a number. A place like Glenholt or Elderhaven is not a row; it does not have a yield that can be set against a prior season's yield. The orchard method required something to count that was not present in the current inquiry. The book was set aside, still open, on the table beside the lamp.

Lano had been lying along the south wall, head on paws. She lifted it now. Her ears went flat and forward, not back, the posture that meant she had heard something that did not match what she expected to hear. She stood and took two steps toward the outer passage, then stopped, then sat, then looked once at the counter. Not asking. Noting.

The counter went to check the lamp oil stores.

The record showed three measures remaining. The actual stores held one measure, perhaps a little more. The record had not been updated since the last delivery, and the last delivery had not come when it was expected. This was noted in the ledger with a date and nothing else, the way a ledger records what it cannot interpret. The salvage materials used to repair the seeing instruments were similarly short; the last sweep for usable parts had returned less than logged, and the difference had not been reconciled.

The seeing instruments had not given a good reading since before the start of the night. Cinderfirth was not visible. Ivorymere was not visible. Nettleness, Elderhaven, Glenholt, Mistgarth, Sablegate: none of them visible. Seven places that should return a signal and returned nothing. The count could not begin on a bad reading. The counter knew this and had written it at the top of the current sheet and underlined it once.

Someone would need to range further than the last supply run to find lamp oil and materials. Whether the roads were open that far out, whether the network of readers who knew those roads was in a position to guide a run, was not yet known. The Hall had sent a query out through the usual channels. It had not come back.

Lano barked once, short and low, from the passage doorway.

The counter noted the time, noted the stores, noted the query still pending, and went back to the shelf to look for another comparison case. The orchard book remained open on the table.

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