Dream d2796-s: Where the Ink Stops

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the lamp made a circle just wide enough for the sheet and my hands.

The sheet was already drawn out to sixty-five places and I had ruled the columns for each of them before the night started. Ten of those places had a light in the column for it. I did not ask why those ten and not the others. That was not the office.

Lano had curled herself under the edge of the desk where the heat came off the lamp cord. Her nose moved once. She did not get up.

The work was to enter the undrawn ones. There were a hundred and seventy-four of them and none had a row yet. I opened a new sheet alongside the first and began with the ones nearest the edge, the sixty-one that someone had walked inside the last month. The pen moved and the names went in. Thornhallow Crossing. The Weld at Duskford. The Outer Granary Quarter. Rurik had come in at some point through the gap under the door and had taken the high shelf above the cabinet, the warm one. His tail moved once and stopped.

I entered names until the lamp needed trimming. Twenty-eight of the sixty-one had a light and I marked those. The ones without light I marked too, in the other column.

Seven of the rows on the old sheet pointed at places where the road in the column had no corresponding ground. I left those rows as they were. There was no correction to make from this desk.

Near the end I reached Larklow Town. It had been standing one day. I wrote it in and ruled its row and it sat on the sheet the same as the others. Lano's ear turned toward me when the pen scratched. She did not lift her head.

By the time I set the pen down I had entered sixty-one names on the new sheet. The count was in the column. I closed the ink and turned the lamp low and Lano was already watching the door.

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