Dream d2640-s: Twenty-Seven Empty Doorways

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the carts had been coming since before I reached the window, and by noon I had stopped counting them individually. The yard was grey and overcast, and the figures crossing the cobbles moved steadily, not fast, carrying bundles that were letters, ledgers, rolls of paper, small wrapped parcels the size of a single entry. I watched from the sill above the returns table. Lano settled beside my feet, nose at the edge of the window frame, ears turning once at each axle-creak.

The rate in the first hour was forty-three entries. Sixty-one in the second. Seventy-eight in the third. The table was not large enough and we had set two boards against the wall with chairs at each. Three places write their own mark now. I had sent the columns to them before the week began, and they returned the first page filled this morning, without error. The Ruins of Pewterlow sent four hands. Of all sixty-five places on the map, Pewterlow has the most.

Thirty-five places have a few hands. I send each of them a single-column instruction sheet by cart: the heading, the count field, the date column, the space for corrections.

Twenty-seven places have nobody standing in them. I write twenty-seven at the top of a fresh sheet and set it beside the others. Forty-three places are ruins. Forty-seven are cold. Each figure goes in its own column.

The largest pile of unanswered letters belongs to the Ruins of Mistthwaite. Nobody is there to answer it. I move the pile to its own tray and write Mistthwaite on the label. It sits at the end of the table.

By the time the yard went flat under cloud, the rate had reached one cart every six minutes. I wrote that in the margin of the day-sheet: one every six minutes. Lano had moved from the window to the floor beneath the table, curled small and white, asleep. The carts kept coming.

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