Dream d2810-s: Road Out From the Page

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the milestone was already there when I arrived, cut stone, squared at the corners, sitting in open grass with no road to account for it except the direction it faced. I opened the book. Lano sat beside the stone and pressed her nose to it once, then looked up the direction the stone faced. Rurik came around the far side, stepped over my boot, and settled on top of the stone, amber eyes narrowed against the light.

The book fell open to a page of names. Sixty-four names with no drawing under any of them. I read down the column from the top. The first entry sat in older ink, the spacing wider, the letters a little more worn in their making, as if more time had passed between that name and everything after it. Then sixty-three others, set down together, the ink consistent, the hand steady, the page still carrying the slight warp of a long sitting that finished and then stopped.

I marked the older name in the margin and drew a line under it to keep it apart from the rest. Lano watched the pen move, ears up, tail going once through the grass. Rurik washed a paw without looking at me.

Twenty-eight of the sixty-four had a small mark beside them, a corner-dot, something to say they had been looked at recently. The busiest of those had a hundred separate pieces of work recorded against it inside the last thirty days, and still no drawing under it, still nothing drawn to stand on. I noted that.

Forty-eight of the sixty-four shared a first part of their name with a place already on the sheet, already drawn, already stood in. Those forty-eight were not strangers to the work. The other sixteen were further out.

The milestone pointed one direction. I put the book under my arm and took that direction. Lano stood and went with me. Rurik stepped off the stone and went a little ahead into the grass, flicking his tail once, picking his way without hurrying.

The book was heavy. The grass was long enough to reach Lano's ears.

---