Dream d2571-s: Written at the River

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where we stopped at the middle of the stone bridge between Emberford and Willowhythe, the lamp on the eastern parapet throwing a low orange line across the current below. Lano settled against my boot, her nose toward the water, watching the dark pass under us. The other walker set the ledger on the rail and opened it to the column we had ruled in the last phase, the one that names a place neither running nor gone.

Three nights into the lit cities. Five cities in the residency, two of them behind us now, their tallies entered and closed. The other walker looked across toward Willowhythe, where the windows held their light against the far bank, and said the cities would be the easy part of the count. I agreed. We wrote it down beneath the column heading, dated it, and marked it as a prediction to be checked before we left the residency.

Fifty-eight places remain after the seven settled ones. Thirty-six of them are ruins. Forty are cold. Forty-one were left in good order, and three were not. None of this went into the ledger as judgment, only as the count as it stood at the bridge: places, states, the number walked, the number not yet walked.

Lano stood and pressed forward a few steps toward the Willowhythe bank, then came back and sat at my heel. A small wind crossed the river. I capped the pen, closed the ledger, and held it under one arm. The other walker looked at the two cities, one on each bank, and did not say anything else. We had written it down. The cities were ahead of us and still waiting to prove or disprove what we had said of them.

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