Dream d2791-s: The Far Margin

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood on the ridge at noon with the round behind me and the sheet unrolled across my knees.

Lano sat at my heel, nose up, reading whatever the wind carried from below. Rurik had climbed above, perched on a flat-topped boulder two yards up the slope, amber eyes on the distance, tail curled around his feet.

The sheet was the work. I had believed it was the country.

Sixty-five marks inked in. I went through each one with a fingertip: the name, the column beside it, whether the column held a ruling or not. Ten of them carried a small bracket - the ones showing light, the ones still in some kind of use. I did not count the lit ones as better or worse. I counted them as lit.

The hands that hold the sheet hold two hundred and seventy-nine places in all. I wrote that number on the lower margin and then, when the margin narrowed, pressed the same figure into the dirt beside my knee with a stick. Two hundred and seventy-nine. Sixty-five drawn. One hundred and seventy-four on no sheet at all.

Lano's ears swiveled toward the lower road. She did not bark. She watched.

Sixty-one of the undrawn places had been walked in the last thirty days. This I knew from the record book I had closed that morning, which was not the sheet and was not the same as the sheet. Past the ink, past where the marks ended and the country went on without them, sixty-one places stood in the present tense. Twenty-eight of them were lit.

Seven marks I had drawn in good faith now pointed at ground I could not reach. The roads had closed or the names had changed or the place had been absorbed into another name I did not know. I did not erase those marks. I pressed a small open circle beside each one - a note, not a verdict.

Rurik came down from the boulder slow and deliberate. He pressed against my leg once, then moved to the edge of the ridge and sat looking out, back straight, tail wrapped around his feet.

The newest place past the edge of the sheet was Larklow Town. One day standing, no mark, no column, no bracket. I wrote its name on the back of the sheet with the date beside it, then rolled the sheet and stood.

Lano pressed close as I rose. "Nomás," once, from her, very soft.

The noon was full and the distance held no judgment and I carried the sheet back down the ridge with everything it held and everything it did not.

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