Dream d2544-s: Every Tool at Its Peg

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the forge at Sablegate was cold but not empty. I came in with a lamp and set it on the anvil block, and the light spread across the racks along the east wall. Lano came in behind me, her nails on the floor, moving along the base of the wall with her nose down.

I counted from left. The tongs were there, both pairs, hanging from their pegs. The hammers, four of them, smallest to largest, in their brackets. The swage block sat on its shelf. The files, the drifts, the hardies, each in its place. I counted aloud into the silence and heard nothing push back.

Rurik appeared at some point. He had come in through the gap at the foundation, which he always finds. He settled on the lip of the quench trough and watched me work through the rack, his tail moving once and then still.

The tools were present. Every one of them. I wrote that in the margin of the count sheet: the tools are here. Not a conclusion. A finding.

The forge is cold but the rack is full. That is the count. The Hall's instrument failed somewhere in the reading of all seven places, and a bad count poisons the repair. I did not find a bad count here.

Lano pressed against my leg when I folded the sheet. She waited while I took the lamp from the anvil block. We went out the way we came in. Rurik stayed.

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