Dream d2813-s: The Ink Answers for Itself

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I climbed a rise early enough that the grass was still cold underfoot, carrying the book open at two places - the near pages and the far pages held apart in each hand. Lano trotted ahead up the slope, circled back at the crest, and sat there watching me arrive.

I held both sheets up to the daylight at once.

The hand was the same hand. The pressure on the downstroke, the slight tilt of the letters at the tail, the way the ink pooled at the base of each capital - all of it the same instrument, the same habit, the same person. The near pages showed the ink dry and worked-over. The far pages showed the ink dry too, and nothing over it.

Rurik appeared at the edge of the rise. He found the high corner of the stone I had rested my bag against and settled himself there, amber eyes level with the horizon.

I turned the far pages in the light. Sixty-three of them were set down in one sitting: I could see it in the run of the script, the way it kept its energy for all sixty-three and did not vary. One was older. The ink on that one had a different color against the sky, a shade closer to brown than to black. That name had waited longer than the others. I looked at the interval in the ink and did not name a cause for it.

Lano's nose worked at something in the grass near my feet, ears pressed flat with concentration.

The far names had motion in them. Fifty-four showed work inside thirty days, twenty-eight carried a light. The busiest one under a waiting name held a hundred separate pieces of work, and its letters were written in the same hand as the quietest one beside it: same tilt, same instrument, nothing to distinguish them by looking.

I set the sheets on the flat stone. The daylight read them. I read them after the daylight.

The hand was the same hand. That was all there was to record, and I recorded it.

Lano lifted her head, ears up, and trotted a little way down the far side of the rise. I followed.

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