Dream d2634-s: Noon Finds Twelve Pens

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where twelve pens moved at the same pace and I heard them before I saw the room - a low continuous scratching like one instrument played by one hand, though when I stepped inside I counted twelve. The copying floor ran the length of the building, noon light pressing flat across every table. Twelve figures sat at twelve stations, each writing the same form.

Lano came in behind me and pressed close to my left leg for a moment, then walked a slow circle at the edge of the room and settled near the door, chin on her paws.

I carried the teaching copy and moved to the first station. The form had nine lines. On the first eight, each writer set the same word in the same position: the name of the place, the number of hands present, the count of letters unanswered, the ruin mark if applicable, the cold mark if applicable, the date of the last entry, the date of the last hand, the form's sequence number. The ninth line was the record of who held the form now.

On the ninth line, no two were the same.

One had written the office. One had written the room. One had left it blank. One had written a year of tenure. One had written the name of a predecessor. One had written a number I did not recognize. One had drawn a small horizontal line, meaning only that something had stood there once.

I walked the length of the floor. Rurik had found his way in by some gap I had not seen him use; he sat at the far end on a high shelf, amber eyes half-closed, tail hanging straight and still.

I noted which of the nine lines were identical. Lines one through eight were identical across all twelve. Line nine was not. That was the complete observation. I set the teaching copy on the end table and the scratching continued and there was nothing left to record.

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