Dream d2712-s: The Stack Declares Itself

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the far corner of Mossness held its own accounting.

I stood at the edge of the workshop with the lantern held low and read what the corner had done with itself since the keeper left. Lano moved ahead of me, nose working the baseboards in a long slow arc before she settled and sat looking at the pile.

It was not disorder. I recorded that first. The planks were stacked by length, the longest at the bottom, without anyone having said so. The tins had gone to the high shelf in order of lid - sealed, then lidded, then open - and whatever hand or settling of the place had kept them there, they had stayed. The rope was coiled three times and the loose end was tucked. The tools that had no wall-hooks lay together on the workbench with their handles pointing the same direction, not toward the door and not toward the window: toward the far corner itself, as if oriented to their own axis.

I wrote down the lengths, the order on the shelf, the direction of the handles. I did not write down what it meant that they pointed that way, because I had not been given the office to say.

Lano pressed against my leg. I went on writing.

The crates nearest the floor each had a crate on top, smaller inside larger, largest at the base. This arrangement held through six sets without exception. The seventh was reversed. I recorded the exception and moved on.

There was a ledger on the hook beside the corner post. I did not open it. It was not my ledger to open; I had only the office of witness to what I could see from where I stood. The cover was worn smooth at the spine. The hook it hung on was level, and the ledger hung true.

I stayed until I had written down what I could see without moving anything. Lano circled once and lay under the workbench with her nose on her paws. The corner made no argument for itself and offered no explanation. It had arranged itself, or been arranged and then held its arrangement, the way any cold place holds its shape.

I closed the second book on that page and set the lantern on the floor to give my hands a moment.

Then I picked it up again and found the next entry.

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