Dream d2665-s: Before the Ledger Was Bound

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I sat at the window of the Ruins of Mistthwaite on the fifth night of my residency there, the light coming through the broken upper pane at a low angle, cold and particular, the kind that makes dust visible but warms nothing. The pile of letters was the largest I had found in any place I had visited. Lano pressed close to my left foot and stayed.

I did not touch the pile. The light was enough to read the date on the uppermost letter: the ninth day of the eleventh month, year three hundred and twelve. I wrote it down.

Then I opened the ledger - the instrument I had carried from the office of the count, the book into which these letters would eventually be entered, when there was someone to enter them. I turned to the first inscription on its opening page. The ledger had been opened for the first time on the fourteenth day of the second month, year three hundred and sixteen.

The letters in this pile were older than the ledger that would hold them. By three years and three months, reckoned roughly. The count had come to this place, made this instrument, and set it into its life of record-keeping, while this pile was already sitting in the window of an empty hall.

I wrote the two dates in my notes. The first: ninth day, eleventh month, year three hundred and twelve. The second: fourteenth day, second month, year three hundred and sixteen. Below them I wrote nothing.

Lano's nose moved along the bottom edge of the stack without disturbing it. Then she sat.

The light shifted as the night came on. I closed my notes. The dates stayed where I had put them.

---