Dream d2761-s: The Folded Edge

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood at the far wall of Osierthwaite with the drawn sheet folded in my hands and the broken courses of stone running ahead of me until they ran into dark.

The sheet had sixty-five places named on it and nine of them carried a mark for light. I knew that before I unfolded it. I also knew, holding it, that the full count was two hundred and seventy-six and that a hundred and seventy-one of those were on no sheet at all.

Lano walked the rubble line ahead of me, nose down, unhurried.

I found the margin where the ink stopped. Below the last entry there was a blank column, and below the blank column a ruled line not yet drawn. I had not drawn it yet.

Rurik came through a gap in the broken wall and sat in the gap and watched me.

Of the fifty-eight undrawn places walked in the last thirty days, twenty-seven were carrying a light. I could not see them from where I stood. I could only read the count I had been given before I set out: fifty-eight walked this round, twenty-seven alight, seven marks on the sheet pointing at ground no reader could reach.

I set the sheet against the flat of the wall and uncapped the pen. Lano sat down beside me. Rurik did not move from the gap.

The last entry was Yarrowgarth, one day standing. I wrote the name. I wrote the condition as I had it: standing, one day, uncharted, light present. I wrote what could be seen from the edge, which was not much. A low shape further into the dark than the wall allowed. A suggestion of standing timber. Nothing to rule on.

Then I ruled the line.

Lano pressed her side against my leg and held still. Rurik blinked once, slow, from the gap, then turned and slipped back through it into the dark where the country continued without names.

I folded the sheet. The line was under it now. The country was not.

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