Dream d2765-s: The Proof of Feet

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the path was smooth in the way that only use makes smooth - not worn by weather but by soles, the soil closed and compressed into a surface that held nothing except pressure, the repeated fact of passage. I crouched over it at the place where the drawn country ended and laid the ledger open across my knee.

Lano circled once and pressed against my side. Her nose found the grass at the path's margin, where the tread had not reached and the ground was still loose.

The task was plain: record the wear. Not where the path led, not what it meant that people had walked it - only that they had, which the path held as clearly as any figure in a column. The smooth center. The slight crown. The two shallow compressions where feet preferred to fall. I wrote these down and the writing was the whole of it.

Past this point the sheet carried no marks. I knew fifty-eight places beyond the ink's reach had been walked in the last month, and when I looked out across the low scrub twenty-seven of them showed some kind of light. Yarrowgarth was one day standing - I had not heard the name before, and its newness was part of what the ledger required. I wrote it at the bottom of the column with the number beside it.

Seven marks on the sheet already pointed at ground no reader could arrive at. I noted this fact. A mark is a mark; the ground may still be there regardless.

Rurik had come ahead, as he did at most turnings. There was no fork here but he had found the place where the path bent and he sat in the scrub with his amber eyes on the tread, tail wrapped around his feet, watching whatever the packed earth showed him.

I finished the entry and closed the ledger. The worn path did not ask to be explained. I stood, and Lano trotted a few steps forward into the undrawn country, ears pricked, and then looked back. I followed. The country continued without requiring anything of us except that we continue through it.

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