Dream d2676-s: Where the Letters Wait

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the table ran the full length of the room and the night outside the window had no particular depth to it, just darkness pressed against glass. I stood at the center of the table with two empty spaces on either side of me and began to sort.

Sixty-five sheets. Each one a place. I read the name of the first and looked for what the sheet told me: whether there were hands to keep the mark there, or no hands at all. I set it to the left. I read the second. To the right.

Lano had settled at my feet for a time, then moved along the wall with her nose low, tracing something I could not see. Rurik had taken the high shelf above the window. He watched from there, tail curled around his haunches, amber eyes catching nothing but the motion of my arms between the piles.

Thirty-five places where a few hands remained. I put them to the left. The pile rose in increments, unevenly, the way any pile of paper rises when the sheets are not all the same weight.

Twenty-seven where no one remained. To the right. These went faster, because there was less to read: no name of any office, no roster of who came and who stayed. Only the place name, and then white space where the rest should have been.

Three places had hands enough to keep their own mark without instruction from outside. These I set in a small third stack at the table's edge. The Ruins of Pewterlow sat at the top of it. Its sheet was dense with offices, with rosters that ran past the margin and continued on a second leaf pinned to the back. I did not count the names. I noted only that there were names.

Lano came back by then and pressed herself against my legs. She stood still a moment, then sat.

The largest pile on the right side - the side for places with no one - had at its base the sheet for the Ruins of Mistthwaite. Its sheet carried a long list of letters sent and not answered. I set it down. I did not add anything to it. There was nothing to add. The pile grew over it as I continued, and by the end the Mistthwaite sheet was buried several places deep.

Forty-two ruins. Forty-six cold. Both numbers distributed across both piles without pattern: cold places sometimes had rosters, ruined places sometimes had officers still present at an address. The sorting was by hands, not by condition.

When I reached the last sheet I set it to the left - a few hands, a place I had not heard named before tonight. The two main piles stood close in height, the right slightly taller.

Rurik dropped from the shelf without sound and sat in the doorway. He did not move from there.

I wrote the totals at the top of a clean sheet: the two numbers and the note about the small third stack. Then I set the pen down.

Lano did not move. The room was quiet. The dark outside the window was still just dark.

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