Dream d2652-s: The Motion of Away

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the gate had already closed behind me before I thought to look back. The folder under my arm was thin - six sheets, maybe seven, each a copy of what had been written into the town's own ledger over the eight nights. I had not counted the sheets. I did not need to. The town had the original; I had the copy; the weight of the thing was the weight of its being surplus.

Lano walked at my left heel, her breath clouding in the night air. She was not looking back either.

The road out of Pewterlow is not lit. There had been somebody at the gate when I arrived eight nights ago - the Keeper of Incoming, who had stood with a lamp and said nothing useful. Tonight there was nobody. The gate had swung on its own counterweight, or someone inside had pulled a cord I had not seen. Either way: closed.

I tried to remember the weight of the folder when I arrived. Empty, eight nights ago, it had weighed nothing I could name. Now it weighed the same. A copy is not an addition. It takes nothing from the original and it adds nothing to itself.

The Ruins of Pewterlow holds the most hands on the map. Three places have enough hands to keep their own mark. Pewterlow is one of them. I had spent eight nights watching those hands learn the register: the Quartermark, the Surety, the Two-Line Attestation. The Quartermark they already knew by another name. The Surety they had been doing without knowing it was a form. The Two-Line Attestation was new to them and they wrote it badly on the first night and correctly by the third. On the eighth night the Tallkeeper initialled the method sheet without prompting, which meant the method was theirs now.

Rurik had appeared at the gate just as I left - from somewhere inside the walls, a gap or a crack in the old stones - and he sat down in the middle of the road ahead of me and stared back toward the gate, his tail wrapped around his feet. Then he blinked once and stood and went ahead along the road without looking back.

Lano paused. Her nose went up. Then she followed.

I did not look back either. The folder was under my arm and not on my back, which is important: a thing under the arm can be given away. A thing on the back is being carried somewhere. I was not carrying this somewhere. I was carrying this away from somewhere, which is a different motion, and the folder knew it.

Six sheets, or seven. The copy of what the town now holds for itself. Its weight: the weight of what has been handed over.

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