Dream d2755-s: Land the Ink Could Not Hold

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the long rise did not end where the drawn country ended. The ruled sheet carried sixty-five places and I had marked nine of them lit; the rise climbed on past every last one of those marks and the grass did not notice the difference. Lano trotted a length ahead, nose working, ears swiveling at something I could not hear. Rurik came level with my left boot and then overtook me without ceremony, slipping uphill through the dark stems.

I held the sheet at arm's length and let the skyline show above its edge. The ink stopped. The ground did not.

Two hundred and seventy-four places are in the hands that hold this work. One hundred and sixty-nine of them have never been put on any ruled surface. I did not count them here, at the rim of the inked country; I set that number down from memory, which is the only place it lives.

Of the fifty-six undrawn places walked on this round, half were alight. I recorded that ratio without comment. Lano sat for a moment, tail moving once, then pushed her nose into the grass and moved on. I moved with her.

Seven marks on the sheet point at ground the sheet cannot convey: roads that end at a fold, a crossing rendered at a scale that swallows the crossing, a district whose boundary falls in the gutter between two panels. The marks are correct. The ground they indicate is not reachable through the ink. I noted them as they were: correct and closed.

Quillvale Town had been standing for one day. I had not drawn it. It stood anyway, at the top of the rise, a cluster of lit windows against a sky the color of cooling iron. Rurik reached it first and sat in the gap between two buildings, amber eyes on me, tail curled over his forepaws. I climbed to where he sat and looked back down at the drawn country laid out below the rise: sixty-five places, nine lights, an edge that the land past it had simply agreed to ignore.

I made one mark at the top of the sheet, in the margin, where there was still room. Lano pressed against my calf and said nothing. The mark was not a place. It was where the ink would have stopped, if the ink had kept going.

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