Dream d2811-s: The Pages Outran

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the track went level past the last roofs and I walked it with the book open, the pages turning slow in the road-wind.

Behind, the roofs sat low against the dark. Ahead, the track ran into country with no drawing under it, only the names the far pages gave. Lano moved beside me, nose down to the packed earth, then up to the air, then down again. She stopped once and held still beside my leg, quieta, before her nose went back to the ground.

The far pages held sixty-four names with nothing drawn beneath them. I read them as I walked, page after page in one hand's lettering that had set sixty-three of them down together in a single sitting and then stopped. One name sat earlier in the book, in older ink, and had waited longer than the rest. The book did not say by how much. I recorded that it had waited and moved on.

Rurik came up from somewhere behind and reached a crossing before me. He sat down in the fork of the path and stared at the darker branch. He did not move until I chose the branch myself and walked past him. Then he came along.

Twenty-eight of the sixty-four waiting names carried a mark I read as a light still going. Fifty-four had a record of work inside the last thirty days, which meant the work had gone on with no ground drawn under it to receive it. Forty-eight of the waiting names began with a part I already knew: the same root as a drawn place, a familiar shape in the mouth before the new ending came. I said a few quietly as I walked. The track took them and gave nothing back.

One name carried more than the rest. I counted the separate pieces of work entered under it and reached a hundred before the page turned. A hundred entries in the record, and no drawing anywhere beneath the name.

The roofs were gone behind a rise. The word-stock had room for nine hundred and sixty names and had so far filled a hundred and twenty-eight of them. Lano trotted ahead a few paces, then looked back. I kept the book open and kept walking, recording what the far pages gave that the sheet did not: names only, held in good order, with their lights on, waiting for ground that had not yet been drawn.

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