Dream d2697-s: The Frame Holds True

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood before the door of the cold house at Mossfell and the night was clear and the door was shut square in its frame: no gap at the head, no gap at the sill, the face of it flush with the surround and the whole of it plumb by eye. Lano sat beside me on the step with her tail still and her ears forward, reading the air beyond the wood.

I raised my hand to the door and tried it.

It opened.

I wrote that down in the second book. The door of the cold house at Mossfell opens from outside. The frame is true. The hang is sound.

Lano crossed the threshold ahead of me, nose low, and I followed into the house and took one turn through the rooms with the lamp. There was a table, two chairs, a shelf with two items on it whose nature I recorded. There was no sign of anything overturned. The hearth held ash and one piece of charred wood that had not finished burning when the last fire was let go. I wrote that too. One unfinished piece. Hearth swept otherwise. No damp at the walls.

Rurik came in somewhere after me and sat himself in the center of the main room and watched. He did not investigate the corners. He turned his amber eyes to the shelf, to the chairs, to me, and blinked once, very slow. He was not cold and he was not afraid, only attending. I let him attend.

I went back to the door and tried it from inside. It opened. I stepped out and tried it shut again from the step. It seated square. I wrote: The latch holds. The door seats from either side. The house is in good order and no one is in it.

Lano pressed briefly against my leg as I finished the entry, and I stood a moment in the frame of the open door with the lamp and the second book and the night at my back before I recorded the last thing: that the frame was true, and I had tried it, and it was so.

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