Dream d2650-s: The Condition Line

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the candle nearest me had burned down to a thumb's width before anyone unrolled the sheet.

The room was the guild hall of Pewterlow Town, and I was seated at the long table on the side nearest the door. Lano had come in with me and lay under the bench, her chin on my foot. Rurik had found the high shelf above the charter cabinet and sat there watching, amber eyes half-closed.

The sheet they unrolled was their form. It had columns I did not recognize: a heading for provenance, a heading for valuation, a heading for current custodian, and a box at the bottom for the seal of the house that had lodged the original count.

Our form had none of these. Our form had a name for the place, a number, a date, and a line for the condition of the record itself.

The Keeper of the Guild's Table - an office I recognized by the chain of keys at their belt - spread the two forms side by side. Lano's nose appeared briefly at the table's edge, then withdrew.

"Your condition line," the Keeper said, pointing at ours. "What does it measure?"

"Whether the record is open or closed," I said. "And whether it closed by intent or stopped mid-sentence."

"That is two things in one line."

"It has been," I agreed.

The Registrar of the Western Ledge - who had been silent until now - pulled our form toward them and read the condition line again. "I can see what it is trying to do," they said. This was not agreement. It was the kind of looking that precedes a long objection.

Their form required a custodian for every entry. Our form required none, because some places had no one left to hold them. I said this. The Keeper said their form could leave the custodian line blank. The Registrar said a blank line was different from a line that was not there: a blank line asked a question every time it was read; a line that was not there asked nothing.

Lano shifted under the bench and let out one long slow breath.

I wrote what had been said in my own record, in the margin beside the condition line. The argument was not finished. The two forms lay beside each other on the table, and I recorded the shape of each column and the words spoken about each. Rurik had closed his eyes on the high shelf. The candle burned down another thumb's width while the Registrar found the page in their ledger where our form had first been discussed and read aloud from it.

What was said was said. I wrote it in the margin. Whether the forms would be reconciled was not tonight's question.

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