Dream d2684-s: The Chalk Runs Thin

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the map was up on the wall of the ledger room as it had been for three nights before this one, and I stood before it with a piece of chalk and traced the shorter round. Lano sat at my feet and watched the moving chalk.

The round fit on less than half the map. I did not expect that, though perhaps I should have. Forty-three places traced, and the light I brought to see them by was barely enough. Most of the map stayed dark while I worked the chalk across the second book's country.

I marked what the book showed: thirty-two places left in good order, seven that had been tended by someone passing, two gone entirely to green, and one left untidy. I did not write down who had left it so. That is not what the second book is for.

Thirty-four of the forty-three have one road out or none. I ran my finger along those, not the chalk, just a finger. Lano pressed her nose to my ankle while I did it.

The oldest place standing is the Ruins of Pewterlow, which is cold, and from it go more roads than from any other place in the second book. I counted them. None of them are occupied. I wrote that down and I wrote it plainly: roads out, number of roads, no one on any of them.

When I stepped back the shorter round sat in the lower left portion of the map, a rough oval of chalk marks, and everything above and to the right was unmarked and dark. The shorter round is not the small portion. But it is the lesser part of what can be read, and most of what can be read is not in it.

I set the chalk on the sill. Lano shifted, settled again, her chin flat on the floor.

---