Dream d2784-s: Past the Last Rule

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the gate at Sablegate had not moved in six nights and I did not expect it to move on the seventh. The road ran on past it regardless, between walls the color of old meal sacks, and I stood at the point where my satchel grew heavy and set it down on the road's flat stones.

Seven entries made. Not one of them full.

I spread the sheet across my knee and read it as it was. Sixty-five places drawn, ten of them showing a mark that meant light. The other fifty-five bore only the first stroke of an entry that had not been completed, or no stroke at all. Seven marks on the sheet pointed at ground I could not locate from any road I had walked. The marks were correctly placed. The ground was not there. I noted this in the margin, briefly, without explanation.

The country past the edge held two hundred and seventy-nine places in all. A hundred and seventy-four of them were on no sheet anywhere I had seen. Sixty-one had been walked within the last thirty days. Of those, twenty-nine showed a light. Larkbarrow was the newest: one day standing. I wrote its name at the foot of the page in the space kept for places not yet drawn, and put nothing else beside it.

Lano pressed her nose to the join between the gate and its post. Her ears flattened, then rose. She padded back to where I crouched at the satchel and settled against my ankle - quieta - with the full weight of a dog that has decided the stopping is correct.

Rurik had taken the high point of the wall earlier in the evening. He remained there. His amber eyes moved between the road behind us and the road ahead. He held his tail flat.

I folded the sheet along its crease and put it back.

The seven entries stood as they were: partial, correctly made. The road ran on past the walls into country that held no entry and needed none from me tonight. I had not been asked to follow it. I picked up the satchel. Lano rose with me. We stood at the shut gate of Sablegate on the last of six nights, and I wrote that the gate was shut, that the road continued, and that seven marks had been made and none of them full, and that this was the condition of the record as I found it.

---