Dream d2588-s: Work Laid Out in Order

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I came to a settlement on the overgrown ground, fourth night of eight, and found at its edge a low building open at one end.

Inside was a workbench.

The tools were set out along it in a row, left-to-right, in the order they would have been reached for: the marking tool, the measuring strip, the two clamps, the plane, the files graded from rough to smooth. A piece of timber lay clamped and chalked, the first cut measured and drawn in a line that nobody had taken yet. The window behind the bench had gone dark long before I arrived, but the light I carried caught the grain of the wood and the chalk line on it.

Lano pressed against my leg in the doorway. Rurik went past us both, slipped to the far end of the bench, sat down, and stared at the clamped timber as if waiting for something to begin.

I took the ledger from my coat and opened it to the wider count. This was one of the fifty-eight I had not yet walked, and it asked for the new column: neither running nor gone. The bench said neither. The work was not running. The work was not gone. The work was set out in the exact order it had been laid down to be done.

I wrote the settlement name and marked the column.

The chalk line did not tell me whose hand had drawn it. I wrote what I could see: a bench, a marked piece of timber, a set of tools in sequence, a morning that had been planned for. The column took that without protest.

Lano moved to the foot of the bench and sat. Her ears were up. Rurik had not moved from his end. Between them the workbench held its full quiet length, tools undisturbed in their order, the wood still clamped at the first cut.

I closed the ledger. That was one of the fifty-eight, and the column held.

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