Dream d2525-s: Still, the Stone Marks

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where Lano came into the calibration yard at the seventh night of the residency and found the stone marks exactly where they had always been. This was the first useful thing in a long time. The marks had been set into the ground at measured intervals in some earlier season, and the ground had not moved, and the marks had not moved, and so I knelt at each one in the dark and pressed a hand flat to the grass and felt the cold edge of the stone and noted: here. Still here. Still here. Still here.

The reading-house stood behind at the edge of the yard, its lamp on, and inside were the ledgers open to the page for the cold houses. The night's work was to verify the instrument before using it, because the instrument had failed and the count could not be trusted while the instrument was wrong. The ground, it turned out, was not the problem. The ground had held every mark in the position it was given. What had failed was the seeing, the reach of the instrument toward the places it was meant to observe.

I drew a line in the ledger: ground honest. Then the list of what was waiting to be seen - Elderhaven, Glenholt, Mistgarth, Sablegate, four cold houses; Cinderfirth, Ivorymere, Nettleness, three lit ones; the Council Hall where the Convener's seat had been closed, the Scriptorium Annex where the Scribe's seat had been closed. All of it waiting. None of it readable tonight from where the instrument stood.

The yard was quiet. The measured distances between the marks had not changed. I wrote that down too: distances unchanged. The calibration would continue tomorrow. Tonight was only this - confirming that the ground is what it claims to be, which it was, which is a beginning.

---