Dream d2537-s: Smaller Than the Accounts

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I climbed the ridge above Mistgarth when the weather finally lifted, and Lano came with me, walking close on the narrow path and then stopping when I stopped at the crest.

Below, in the clear air, the village lay out roof by roof. I had brought the old accounts from the satchel - the ones the Hall had been working from when the seeing was poor - and I opened them on the flat rock and held them against what the ridge was giving me now.

Mistgarth was smaller than the accounts had it.

The register named four lanes of buildings reaching toward the water. The ridge showed two, and a third begun and abandoned before it reached the second story. The harbor count in the record said twelve moorings; I counted eight, one of them post-and-rope only, which I noted separately. The accounts were not wrong in any one place I could point to as a deliberate error. They were taken when someone had needed Mistgarth to be larger, or in poor light, or by a counter who had trusted an older count and only verified the edges.

I wrote down what the ridge was showing me: two lanes complete, eight moorings, no smoke from the building at the north end, one sealed gate on the landward side. Lano walked a few paces forward and stood looking down at the rooflines. Then she came back and pressed against my leg and did not move again until I was ready to leave.

The Hall asked, at the end of the last count, how a place quiet but still standing is counted. I do not have that answer tonight. Mistgarth is quiet and still standing, and I have written it standing. Whether it is counted the same as the three still lit - Cinderfirth, Ivorymere, Nettleness - is not a question I can answer from this ridge. I can only repair the reading. The reading tonight is smaller than what was on record.

I put the accounts back in the satchel with the new notes laid on top. On the way down Lano stayed at my heel, which she had not done on the way up.

---