Dream d2680-s: Forty-Seven Cold

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where it was the sixth and last night in the ledger room, and the round had grown smaller since the first.

The map on the wall was dark. I did not light it. Lano had settled at the foot of the high chair - quieta - and Rurik was somewhere above me on the tall shelf, a weight I could hear shift once and then nothing.

I set the count book open to the last written line. Sixty-five places. Three of them with people enough to carry their own mark from here without help. Thirty-five with a few still in them. Twenty-seven with no one standing inside them at all.

Forty-three ruins. Forty-seven cold.

The Ruins of Pewterlow had more people writing into its record than any other place on the map. I noted that on a slip and laid it inside the front cover without reopening the page.

At the Ruins of Mistthwaite the pile of unanswered letters was the largest on the map. There was no one left there to answer them.

I wrote the total at the foot of the last column: the count, the date, the title of the office. I closed the first book. Then the second. The map was still dark on the wall behind them.

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