Dream d2800-s: Larklow Town, One Day Old

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the last sheet of the round went onto the shelf at the ninth hour, the roller catching the lip of the board and the paper settling with a sound like a held breath released. Lano padded once around the base of the shelving and sat facing the high row of tubes, her ears tilted forward as though listening for something the paper might say.

The map room at night has its own arithmetic. I counted the lights on the drawn sheet before I put it away: ten places with a lamp in the window out of sixty-five named. That is the number the sheet can hold. Then I thought about the other count, the one the sheet cannot hold, and I stood with the roller in both hands for a moment before setting it down.

Two hundred and seventy-nine places are held in the record of this round. Sixty-five appear on any drawn sheet. The remaining hundred and seventy-four have no ink line, no ruled column, no border. Sixty-one of them were walked within the month. Twenty-eight of those sixty-one showed a light when I passed.

Rurik came in through the gap at the bottom of the door and leapt straight to the high shelf, displacing nothing, settling between two tube ends and staring down at the room below as though the arithmetic were visible from that angle.

Seven marks on the drawn sheet point at ground no reader can reach. I made no notation beside them. A mark that points at unreachable ground is a true mark, and correcting a true mark would make it false.

The newest place past the edge has been standing for one day. Larklow Town. I wrote the name in the ledger by lamplight, Lano pressing her nose once to the corner of the page, then settling her chin on her paws beside the inkwell. Nothing more needed from her. One day is young enough that the ink of the name is still deciding what it means.

The wider sheet is shelved with its edge unfinished because the country past the edge does not wait for the sheet to catch up. The edge is left open because closing it would be a claim the record cannot support. What is written is written. What is standing past it is also standing.

I extinguished the lamp. Rurik stayed on the shelf. Lano followed me out.

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