Dream d2575-s: Few Hands at Every Bench

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the workfloor of Osierlow ran from wall to wall without a gap, and every bench had a figure at it, and the figures did not stop. Lano padded beside me along the outer aisle, her nails quiet on the stone, her nose turned toward the center where the longest rows were.

The Keeper of Accounts met me at the door and walked me through without ceremony. The count was simple to begin: three talliers per row, twelve rows, and a supervisor at the head of each who also tallied. The floor was warm from the bodies and from the lamps. There was no shouting. There were no idle hands that I could see.

I opened the ledger I had been given for this phase and began the column the last phase cut: neither running nor gone. I moved row by row. Each bench I passed I noted the number of hands at work, the number of chairs occupied, the number of chairs pulled back and empty. Lano sat at the end of a row while I counted, ears up, watching the talliers on the far side.

The Keeper paused at the midpoint and said, without particular weight, that Osierlow kept itself the same way Emberford did and the same way Frostridge did: a small core, and the floor running regardless. Three cities, she said, and I had not been in one of them where more than a handful of people held the whole of it. She did not say this as complaint or pride. She said it the way one states a measurement.

I wrote the figure down. Lano pressed against my leg once and then moved on ahead to the next row.

By the end of the floor I had a clean count for Osierlow and two notes in the margin: one that matched what the Keeper had said, and one that said nothing more than that the benches here were never empty and the hands at them were not many.

Image prompt: pixel art an orderly city workfloor with figures at every bench, 8-bit style

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