Dream d2802-s: Names Before the Ground

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I carried the book of names to the lectern and opened it at the far pages, and the pages were already full.

Sixty-four names with no drawing under them. I read them line by line. The hand was consistent throughout: the same pressure, the same spacing, the same slight lean in certain letters. Sixty-three of the names had been set down in one sitting - I could tell by the ink, by how the flow never broke from one entry to the next, no variation in the drying, as if one long night had produced them all without pause. The sixty-fourth was different. The ink had aged differently at the edges, and though the hand was the same hand, something in it sat apart from the others. A different night, possibly. A different year. That name had been waiting the longest of any of them.

Lano was at the foot of the lectern, nose to the iron fitting at the base, still for a moment, then settled with her head on her paws.

I held the lamp closer. Twenty-eight of the waiting names caught the light: some quality in the ink, some trace of work done over them. Fifty-four of the sixty-four had dates in the margin inside the last thirty days. The busiest of the waiting places had a hundred entries in thirty days and its name stood no larger than any other on the page.

Rurik had come in while I was reading, slipping through a gap in the door I had not noticed, and was on the high shelf behind me, amber eyes on the book. His tail moved once and then stopped.

The whole word-stock could have made nine hundred and sixty names. It had made a hundred and twenty-eight. Forty-eight of the waiting names shared their first part with a place already drawn - the same root, the same beginning, but no line on any map connecting them to their drawn kin.

The task was to record what was there, and I recorded it. The older name - the one that had waited the longest - I left my finger beside it for a moment before moving on.

Lano raised her head and watched me. I turned the lamp down and carried the book back.

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