Dream d2603-s: Taller Than the Table

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I was in the sorting room of the Ruins of Mistthwaite on the third night of the residency, and the pile of unanswered letters reached higher than the table it stood beside. The table came to my chest. The pile went past my chin.

I opened the ledger to the new column and wrote Mistthwaite at the top of the page.

Lano nosed along the base of the pile, reading the dust the way she reads dust, and then settled close to my heel and was still.

The letters near the top were postmarked eight months back. The letters near the bottom were from the week the last resident left. I did not open any of them. I counted the rough strata: eight, and each stratum a month, which placed the stopping-point at one year ago and a few days. Someone had sorted the arriving mail for a short time after the last resident left - either they had returned briefly, or they had arranged for someone else to come - and then the arrangement had ended, and the pile had grown from there on its own.

I wrote: last sort, approximately one year prior. I wrote: volume, consistent with a full year of correspondence for an occupied office. I wrote: window, intact. I wrote: lamp fixture, present, no fuel.

The room smelled of cold paper and something behind it I could not name. Lano lifted her head toward the window, then lowered it again.

I added to the column: interior condition, good order at time of cessation; reason for cessation, not determined; standing, neither running nor gone.

The pile was taller than the table. I had come to record that, and I had recorded it, and I closed the ledger and set the lamp down and stood with Lano in the quiet of the sorting room while the dark held outside the intact window.

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