Dream d2732-s: The Latch Left Up

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I came back into Pewterlow along the eastern road at evening, and the first thing I checked was the gap in the wall where the arch had come down, and the way through it was clear. Passable. I wrote it down.

Lano padded a little ahead and then waited, ears angled toward the interior. The light was the color of old brass, low and level, and it put long shadows behind every standing stone. I came around to the north entry next, the one that is still bordered by the original coursing on both sides, and it was open. Not broken open, not forced. Open in the way a thing is open when nobody has troubled to shut it. I wrote that down too.

There are roads into the Ruins of Pewterlow from four directions. I have been on all of them this week, going out. Tonight I went in along each of them in turn, last to first. The track from the south, which follows the dry channel: open. The path through the upper rubble, which is not a road by any proper measure but which can be walked without obstacle: open. The west gap, where the wall has settled into two separate leaning portions and left a corridor between them: open.

Lano sat in the grass near the west gap for a moment, nose down. Then she came back to me and we went on.

The Ruins hold nothing that would shut a gate. There are no gates left that work. What there is, is the plain fact of access: you can arrive, and leave, and arrive again. The entries do not discriminate and they are not maintained. They simply remain.

I stood for a moment at the center, where the old floor of the hall is still readable under the grass, and I looked at each entry in sequence. North. East. South. West. All open at the hour of record. I put that down in the second book, in the place marked for this place, with the date and the light.

Lano had settled into the grass a little way off. She was watching the eastern road, the way we had come in. The light was nearly gone.

I wrote the final line: no entry to the Ruins of Pewterlow was found shut on the last evening of the round. The record does not praise this. It only says it.

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