Dream d2641-s: Twin Entries, Neither Struck

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where two sheets arrived for the same place before I had finished sharpening the nib, and I set both face-up on the table without folding either.

The place was a middle-sized ruin, not Pewterlow with its crowd of hands, not Mistthwaite with its unanswered pile taller than the doorframe - one of the thirty-five with only a few still standing in it. The name was in the header of both sheets, spelled the same way, dated different mornings.

I read the surveyor's sheet. The surveyor had walked the outer wall and entered three rooms as intact, the stair as collapsed, and the eastern window as missing its sill. The count at the bottom was four rooms total, three standing, one fallen.

I read the keeper's sheet. The keeper had entered from the garden side and found the stair in use - "passable with care" was the phrase - and the eastern window silled in fresh stone, the sill miscolored against the old work, still settling. The count at the bottom was four rooms total, two standing, one repaired, one collapsed.

Lano sat between my feet and did not move. Rurik had taken the warm corner near the lamp; he watched from there with his amber eyes half-closed, tail folded over his paws.

I opened the register to the page for that place and did not strike either account. I wrote the surveyor's date and the surveyor's numbers in the left column. I drew a thin line down the center of the page and wrote the keeper's date and the keeper's numbers in the right column. Where the two differed I wrote nothing to reconcile them. The stair was collapsed and the stair was passable. The sill was missing and the sill was new. Both were entered. Neither was crossed out.

The columns sat side by side on the page the way the two sheets sat side by side on the table.

I noted in the margin: two hands, same place, different mornings, both received.

Lano's ear moved. She pressed closer against my ankle.

I turned over both sheets and looked for a notation on the back of each. There was none on either. I blotted the ink and closed the register and left both sheets flat on the table, pinned at the corner by a small smooth stone I had been carrying in my pocket.

The lamp did not dim. The room did not change. The two columns stayed as I had written them: true to their own mornings, both standing in the record, neither requiring the other to be wrong.

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