Dream d2773-s: The Running Tally

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the Amberholt yard smelled of resin and fresh-cut pine, and the stacks ran in three rows from the saw-house to the frame posts. I counted the boards in the first row and kept counting: the full yard held four hundred and twelve pieces, planks and battens and three long principal beams that had not been moved yet. A pair of workers were carrying one of the principals between them, one at each end, walking it slowly toward the half-risen frame where it would go. Lano walked beside me and worked her nose along the base of each stack, her white coat dusted pale gold with sawdust at the belly. Rurik had taken the high point, the top of the third stack, and sat there washing a paw while his amber eyes tracked the beam.

The sheet I held had sixty-five places marked on it and ten of them carried a light. I knew there were two hundred and seventy-nine places in all belonging to this country. A hundred and seventy-four of them stood past the edge of any line I had drawn. Sixty-one of those had been walked in the last thirty days. I wrote a note in the margin while the workers set the beam down into its mortice and one of them tapped it square with a mallet.

Twenty-nine of the unwritten places were showing something tonight. Seven of the marks already on the sheet pointed at ground a reader could not reach from any direction I knew. I wrote that too, and kept the pen moving. Larkbarrow was the newest: one day standing, and I had not reached it.

The second worker carried a spirit level to the beam. The bubble settled. They looked at it without speaking and went back for the next piece. The yard went on producing its smell. Four hundred and twelve pieces to go into the frame; four hundred and twelve less on the ground by morning.

Lano sat down against my foot. Rurik closed his eyes. I put the pen back in my coat.

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