Dream d2798-s: The Tally Spills the Column

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the Keeper read the entries aloud from the beginning of the column, her voice unhurried, and I sat at the table and listened. Lano lay at the Keeper's feet, nose tipped toward the page as though the names carried a scent. The map room was quiet except for the reading. Rurik had claimed the high shelf above the western window and sat there with his tail drawn around his paws, amber eyes half-shut against the candlelight.

When the Keeper reached the sixty-fifth name, she did not stop. The column continued past what the old drawn sheet had ever held. I wrote sixty-five in the margin and the Keeper kept reading. Lano's ears rose once and settled. The counting offered no ceremony. By the time the column was done, the number of places held in these hands stood at two hundred and seventy-nine.

Of that full count, one hundred and seventy-four appeared on no sheet that could be opened and laid flat. Among the places that were drawn, ten carried a light when I checked them against the column. Thirty others drew no lamp at all.

Sixty-one of the places with no line around them had been walked within this last turning of the month. Of those, twenty-eight were alight when the Keeper read their condition back. The remaining thirty-three were dark and gave nothing to the column but their names.

Seven entries on the drawn sheet led to ground no reader could follow to. I set a small mark beside each. The Keeper did not ask what the mark meant. Lano pressed her shoulder against my ankle while I worked.

The newest place past the drawn edge was named Larklow Town. A single day of existence was all it carried when the column received it. I wrote the name. The Keeper read it aloud once. Rurik blinked slowly on his shelf and turned his face toward the dark window.

Both numbers sat in the margin where I had placed them: sixty-five, and then two hundred and seventy-nine. Nothing was added to account for what lay between them. Lano exhaled and was still.

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