Dream d2690-s: The Milestone Stays

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the moor ran flat in every direction and there was no light but a diffuse grey that came from the cloud itself, not from any break in it. The milestone was there beside the track, a pale upright stone, and I crouched at it with my ledger open across my knee.

The letters were cut deep and had not been filled in. I read them: a place name, a distance, a second place name, a second distance. The Ruins of Pewterlow to the east, an unnamed junction to the west. I copied both into the ledger, along with the note that the milestone stood, that the lettering was legible, that no one was on either road.

Lano pressed her small white nose into the grass at the base of the stone and sniffed a long, patient circle around it before sitting back and watching me write.

The second book was open to its early pages. Of the forty-three places I carried, this was not a first entry and not a last; it was somewhere in the cold middle, where the record names a condition and attempts nothing further. Good order, tended, gone to green, or left untidy: the milestone was in good order. I wrote that down.

The road east led eventually to the Ruins of Pewterlow. I would not walk it tonight. The round is shorter than the round it follows, and the Ruins sit past what this night covers. I noted the count: roads departing Pewterlow, all named, none occupied.

I closed the ledger. Lano was already a few paces ahead on the track, her tail low and steady, moving the way she does when she knows the direction without being told.

I followed.

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