Dream d2573-s: A Rod's Length of Letters

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the letter room in Willowhythe was open to me at the late hour when the sorting clerks had gone. The pile stood on the long table near the window, tied in bundles at intervals along its length, each bundle bound with a different color of string - some of it faded, some of it new. Lano entered behind me and settled at the edge of the room, watching.

The rod I carried was a plain one, marked at regular intervals. I set one end at the base of the pile and read the depth: four rods and a little more. I noted this in the ledger that had been left open for the purpose. I did not open any bundle. I did not read any address. The depth was the count, and the count was enough.

Through the window behind the pile, Willowhythe's lights held steady over the water. They did not ask anything of the room.

Lano padded the length of the table without jumping onto it, nose low, following the floor below the bundles. She stopped at the far corner and pressed her flank against the wall there and stayed.

I turned a page in the ledger and wrote the room's name, the method, and the measurement. Four rods and a fraction. The pile was not the largest in the world - that belonged to a ruin further north that the clerks here did not speak of. But this pile was Willowhythe's, and its depth was now a number that would persist past the night.

I set the rod along the edge of the table so it could be found and closed the ledger. Lano lifted her head when I moved toward the door and walked out ahead of me into the corridor, where the city's light came through the high windows and the count continued to be true without needing to be said.

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