Dream d2526-s: The Written Hour

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the lamp oil was cold in its well, and its smell came through the doorway before any light did. Lano was already at the brass instrument when I arrived, her nose against the housing, her tail moving once.

There are seven places in the count: three still lit, four gone cold, and tonight the instrument reads none of them. Not slowly - it failed at once, a clean failure, and the Lens-Keeper recorded it without decoration and then began the repair.

I worked beside her. The brass fittings were cold, the mounts stiff. The first collar came loose easily and showed nothing wrong. The second the same. At the third I found it: the seal had gone soft - not cracked, not broken, soft - and had shifted a fraction out of true. I pressed it back, set the collar, worked the next fitting to its thread.

Lano sat beside the lamp and watched the glass. Outside, the night was clear and the places were as they were, indifferent to whether we could read them.

When the last fitting was seated I steadied the glass and looked.

Cinderfirth came through. Not the four cold ones - Elderhaven, Glenholt, Mistgarth, Sablegate were dark as before, quiet and unlit. Not the Council Hall, not the Scriptorium Annex, their seats closed. But Cinderfirth came through the glass clean: a window lit, a sighting, a thing to record.

The Lens-Keeper did not look first. She took up the pen and wrote the hour in the register - the hour and nothing else - and then looked.

Lano did not move from her place by the lamp. Three places still lit; four cold; two seats closed and not to be reopened. The count waits on nothing but the reading, and tonight the reading was honest.

---