Dream d2648-s: Different Kinds of Blank

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the two books were laid flat on the keeper's table in the upper room of the Registrar's office in Pewterlow Town, and neither of us had said anything yet because the comparison was still settling.

Their form had a column ours did not: a column for the date a place last answered correspondence. Not the date of last occupation. Not the date a surveyor came through. The date of last reply. The Registrar pointed to it and left her finger there for a moment. I looked at it. It told something ours could not tell.

Our form had a column theirs did not: a count of persons present on the day of the survey. Not an estimate, not a range, not a season. A number, taken on a specific day. The Registrar looked at it. There was no equivalent space in their book. I did not explain why we kept it.

Lano had settled under the table during the silence. I felt her press against my foot. Her nose came out once to investigate the chair leg across from mine and then withdrew.

I looked at the date-of-last-reply column in their book. Some entries carried dates from years back. Some carried nothing. The blank meant either the place had never replied, or the entry had not been maintained. Their form did not say which. I noted that without speaking it.

The Registrar looked at our count column. Most entries had a number. A few had a dash, which was what we wrote when no one could be found on the day of the walk. Their form had no notation for that. A blank in their ledger and a blank in ours were different things, but on the page they looked the same.

I wrote a note in my book's margin about the date-of-last-reply column. The Registrar did not write anything about ours. She was still looking at it.

Lano's ears came up at something in the street below. She did not move. After a moment she settled again, her chin returning to the floor.

We closed both books and set them side by side on the shelf, and the lamp between them threw one shadow from two spines, and in the morning one of those blanks would mean absence and the other would mean silence and neither form would be able to say so.

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