Dream d2741-s: The Country Past the Ink

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the great sheet was unrolled across the long table and I set the weights at its four corners while Lano watched from the floor beside my foot. Rurik had already taken the warm spot at the table's far end, amber eyes half-closed, tail moving once and then still.

The sheet held sixty-five places. I counted them with my finger moving from mark to mark without lifting it, and the count came back the same. Ten of the sixty-five showed a light - a small open circle beside the name, meaning something had moved there within the window we kept.

The sheet does not hold all of it. The hands that keep this room hold two hundred and seventy-three places in total, and a hundred and sixty-eight of them have no mark on the sheet at all. I stood with this fact for a time. Lano sniffed the lower edge of the table and then lay down with her nose on her paws.

Fifty-two of the undrawn places had been walked inside the last thirty days. They are not idle or forgotten. They are simply past where the drawing ends.

I walked to where the ink stopped. The line is clean there - not faded, not uncertain. I looked past it. Fifty-two places are walked on this round beyond the edge, and twenty-seven of them are lit. The sheet has not caught any of it.

Seven marks on the sheet point at ground no reader can reach now. The paths are closed or were never confirmed, and the marks remain. I wrote that down. I did not remove the marks.

The newest place past the edge is called Ivorylow. It has been standing for one day. That is all this room knows of it.

Lano pressed close to my leg at the edge of the drawn country. She made a small sound - mira - and looked out at the air past the ink. I looked with her. The country past the edge did not stop where the drawing stopped. It was simply standing there, un-noted, receiving no grade.

---