Dream d2644-s: Dusk at the Returns Table

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I sat on the stone steps outside the hall with the month's tally open across my knees, and the street below was empty, and Lano sat one step down from me with her nose lifted to whatever the evening carried.

The sheet recorded sixty-five places. I read through it the way you read a ledger when the counting is done and nothing more is being added, only received.

Three of them had hands enough to keep their own record from here. I noted each of those three and moved on.

Thirty-five had only a few hands. Not none. Not enough. The sheet did not say whether a few would hold.

In twenty-seven of the sixty-five, the column for hands was blank. I read each name in the order they appeared and did not stop.

Forty-three were ruins. The cold ones numbered forty-seven. These two figures overlapped somewhere in the middle of the list, where a ruin was also cold, or where something cold had not finished becoming a ruin.

The place with the greatest number of hands keeping a record in it was the Ruins of Pewterlow. I noted this.

At one place, the unanswered letters had accumulated past any height the sheet could measure, and no one remained there to read them. I noted this also.

Lano had found a stone on the lower step. She pressed her nose to it, then set her paw on it and held it there without doing anything further.

The hall behind me stayed closed. The street below stayed empty. I folded the sheet along its crease when the dusk went past reading into something darker, and I went inside.

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