Dream d2806-s: The Naming Ran First

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I sat on the stone step outside a tall doorway at first light, the book propped open on one knee, and Lano settled beside me on the cold flag, her chin finding my ankle. The light came flat and early over the map room's roof. I turned to the far pages.

The book held a hundred and twenty-eight names. I counted them from the first page to the last, and beside sixty-four of them a drawing had been laid in: lines, a boundary, the particular shape of a place committed to ink. Sixty-four names stood without any drawing under them. Not one drawn place was without a name. The naming had come first every time, and nothing in the book reversed that order.

Sixty-three of the names still waiting had been entered together in one work: one session, one hand moving steadily until it stopped. The sixty-fourth waiting name had been entered alone, well before that session, and had waited longer than all the others combined. I recorded the two facts side by side and wrote nothing after them.

I looked at what the waiting names carried. Twenty-eight of them showed a mark I read as a light. Fifty-four had held active work inside the last thirty days: motion logged, entries added, the place clearly alive in use. The full word-stock from which names could be drawn would have made nine hundred and sixty of them; a hundred and twenty-eight had been made. Forty-eight of the waiting names opened with a syllable already shared by a name that had its drawing, already placed and fixed.

Lano lifted her head and turned toward the doorway. Her ears came up and forward. She turned back and pressed her nose once against the back of my hand, then lowered her chin again to the flag.

The busiest of the waiting places had a hundred separate pieces of recorded work from inside thirty days. I wrote that number beside its name and added nothing to explain the size of it.

The person who had entered the names had entered them before any drawing was made, every time, without exception, and then had stopped. That was the order. I recorded the order. The light had come fully up over the roof by the time I reached the last page, and the step beneath me had gone from cold to warm.

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