Dream d2770-s: Lights the Sheet Cannot Hold

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the residency reached its eighth and last evening on the high verge above Osierthwaite. The dusk came level and slow across the undrawn country and I stood with the sheet held toward whatever light remained in the west, the drawn portion facing out.

Lano sat at my heel on the rise, her white coat dulled by the hour, her nose working the valley air in slow passes. Once she said "lejos," very quietly, and was still again. Rurik had gone three paces ahead to where the ground fell away and crouched there without moving, amber eyes tracing something below.

The sheet carries sixty-five places. Among them I counted nine lights.

The full count of places held in these hands is two hundred and seventy-six. A hundred and seventy-one of those appear on no sheet at all. Fifty-eight of the undrawn places had been walked within the last thirty days. I walked all fifty-eight on this round. The tally of lit windows among them came to twenty-seven.

Seven names on the drawn sheet lead where no path from the ink will follow. The reader arrives at the name and the ground behind it is absent.

The newest place past the ink has been standing one day. It is called Yarrowgarth.

The dark came up from the valley floor faster than it came from the sky. Lano pressed close. Rurik did not move from his crouch at the verge. I wrote the number down, folded the sheet along its crease, and held it.

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