Dream d2667-s: The Unsigned Settlement

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I walked back from the Ruins of Mistthwaite with the folder still under my arm, sealed.

The antechamber at Mistthwaite held the largest pile of unanswered letters on the map. They were stacked against the eastern wall, addressed to a post that had no one standing in it. I stood in the antechamber with the folder and set nothing down. Lano pressed close against my ankle and was still.

The folder contains a registration form. It was prepared for a settlement that had agreed to maintain its own mark. The keeper's signature would have completed it. There was no keeper at Mistthwaite to sign.

I did not add the folder to the pile. The letters are unanswered. The folder is different: it was brought to be given, not sent ahead to wait.

The road out of Mistthwaite runs through low fields. Lano walked ahead for a stretch, nose down in the grass at the verge, then dropped back to heel without being called. The night was clear. Lights showed at the far edge of the fields from the direction of Pewterlow, where three offices share the count and the mark is kept by more hands than any other place on the map.

At a fork, Rurik was sitting in the road. He watched us approach without moving, amber eyes steady. We walked around him. He did not follow.

The folder was the same weight it had been when I set out. Nothing had been written on it at Mistthwaite. Nothing had been crossed out.

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