Dream d2619-s: The Second Board

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the painters came in during the fifth night of residency, when the candles were new and the ledger room still. They mounted the first board on the north wall: a painted grid, rows of squares, each with width enough for a place name and four marks. Seven squares were already chalked from the previous nights, settled, and I did not open them again.

Lano was at the door when the painters arrived, nose up toward the fresh paint. She came in behind them and settled under the ledger table once the smell leveled off.

The lit cities fell in a group at the top of the board. Emberford: standing, counted, the new column clear. Frostridge: standing, counted. Osierlow, Willowholt, Willowhythe: the same for each. Five marks in the running column, five blanks in the column for neither-running-nor-gone. The painter beside me ticked each square as I called it.

Then the cold and the ruined.

The Ruins of Mistthwaite: cold, ruined. The largest accumulated correspondence of any place on the map sits there unread. I wrote "unresolved correspondence" in the notes margin, nothing more. Rurik had come in at some point and taken the shelf above the window. He watched from there, tail curled over the edge.

The marks accumulated. Cold settlements where order had been kept: many. Cold ruins where order had been kept: more than I expected. Eldergate Town: cold, standing, roads partial and left. The Ruins of Frosting, the Ruins of Mossness, the Ruins of Zephyrden: cold, ruined, disorder in each. I marked each one and did not pause to expand.

At the sixty-first name, the painter set down his chalk. The board was full, made for sixty squares, not sixty-five. Four names remained without a place on the grid.

His colleague had gone out to the corridor. He returned with a second board, smaller than the first, which had been leaning in the passage since the residency began. They hung it beside the first on the north wall, matched the top edges, and ruled four fresh squares to complete the grid. Lano got up and walked to the new board, sniffed its base, then came back and pressed against my shin.

The last four names went in: each marked, each only what the column requires. When the sixty-fifth was chalked, the second painter stepped back and looked at both boards together. The gap between them - a hand's width of plaster - was where the count had broken and resumed. Rurik dropped from the shelf, crossed the floor without sound, and sat in front of that gap. He stared at the wall above both boards for a time, then moved away.

I wrote the total in the ledger: sixty-five counted, all columns filled. The second board was not the plan. It is the record.

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