Dream d2799-s: Three Margins in Lamplight

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where lamplight lay over the new sheet and the margin on three sides held nothing, and I was at the table to record that it held nothing.

The Cartographer of Offices stood across from me. This was the seventh night of eight in this room. The sheet carries sixty-five places. I moved a finger along the rows reading for lights: ten of the sixty-five are lit. Seven marks on the sheet name ground that no visiting reader can reach from any direction the sheet describes; I noted those seven in the left-hand margin, which was not one of the three that are empty.

Rurik had come before me. He was settled on the high shelf above the rolled documents, tail hanging straight, amber eyes taking in the room. He did not stir when I arrived, only shifted his weight once and resettled.

Lano came in behind me and walked the far wall before settling with her chin on the floor and her nose still. Her ears stayed up. She watched the lamp.

The task of this night was the edge of the drawn country. The full count of places: two hundred, seventy-nine. A hundred and seventy-four of them appear on no sheet. Sixty-one of those were worked within the last thirty days. I wrote the figures in the space above the foot of the page, not in the right-hand margin, which remains one of the three that are empty.

Outside the drawn edge: sixty-one places walked on this round, twenty-eight of them alight. The newest is Larklow Town, one day old.

I held the pen over the right-hand margin. I did not write there. The empty margin is the record for tonight, and the record is that it is empty.

Rurik blinked once and looked away. Lano's tail moved, settled.

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