Dream d2515-s: Not Absent, Only Cold

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the slate on the wall of the Council Hall had nothing written on it, and the chalk sat in the groove at the bottom of the frame the way chalk sits when no one has decided yet what to do with it.

Night five of eight in the Hall. The work was the count. The count could not begin because the instrument that sees the places was giving back nothing, and a count taken on a bad reading is worse than no count.

Someone said: we could mark them absent. Elderhaven, Glenholt, Mistgarth, Sablegate. Write each name and put absent beside it. That is a thing you can do when you have chalk and a slate and no other word for the condition.

Someone else said: absent is a word for people.

No one answered that immediately. The chalk stayed where it was. The slate stayed blank.

I stood with Lano near the back of the Hall and looked at the four names that had been spoken into the air and not written down. The Council Hall's own seat was already closed, the Convener's place among the seven no longer occupied. The Scriptorium Annex the same, the Scribe's seat recorded and done. Two closures already entered correctly. The remaining seven, Cinderfirth and Ivorymere and Nettleness lit, Elderhaven and Glenholt and Mistgarth and Sablegate gone cold, could not be read tonight from the Hall because the seeing had failed, not the places.

What you call a place that does not answer is not the same question as what you call a person who does not answer. The word for one does not carry across to the other. Absent presumes something that could return. A house that has gone cold is not expected to return. It is cold. It is standing. It is unlit. There is no word in the Hall's register for that condition, and that is why the chalk had not moved.

Lano looked at the slate and then at the chalk and did not pick it up. Neither did anyone else.

The count stayed open. The seeing stayed broken. Outside the Hall, Cinderfirth was lit and Ivorymere was lit and Nettleness was lit, and the four cold places were standing in whatever state they stood in, unread, uncounted, not absent, not present, not anything the register had a column for yet.

The chalk rested on the ledge. The groove was just wide enough to hold it without it rolling off. That was the last thing I noticed before I stopped dreaming.

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