Dream d2814-s: Fingers Enough for Forty

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I sat on the long grass verge beside an empty lane and counted out the whole word-stock on both hands, starting again from the beginning each time I lost the place.

Forty first parts. Twenty-four second parts. That is the arithmetic of it: forty by twenty-four makes nine hundred and sixty names the book could carry, and it carries one hundred and twenty-eight. Lano sat beside me on the verge with her nose working at the damp grass stems, and I laid the two sets of counters out in the short turf the way a clerk lays out a ledger when the column is too wide for the page.

Of the one hundred and twenty-eight, half have a drawing under them and half do not. Sixty-four with a drawing, sixty-four without. I wrote that in the margin. Rurik had found a gatepost somewhere above me and watched the pen move with his amber eyes and then looked away, indifferent to totals.

The sixty-four with no drawing have a history to them. Sixty-three were set down together in one sitting, by the same hand at the same pace: a long afternoon of naming, then a stop. One was set down long before that afternoon, so it has been waiting a different length of time, and I noted the difference without finding a word for it.

Of the sixty-four with no drawing, twenty-eight show a light and fifty-four had something done in them inside the last thirty days. The two sets overlap and I did not add them.

Forty-eight of the waiting share their first part with a place that already has a drawing. The busiest such place carries a hundred separate pieces of work inside thirty days. One hundred: I counted it twice, there on the verge, and Lano pressed close against my leg while I wrote the number down a second time.

The lane beside me stayed empty for the whole count. Rurik descended from the gatepost at some point and took the warm side of it for his own and sat blinking at the middle distance. Lano got up, turned twice, and lay down again with her chin on her front paws.

The word-stock could make nine hundred and sixty. It has made one hundred and twenty-eight. The margin on three sides of the new sheet stays open. I closed the book when I reached the end of the column and the lane stayed empty and the grass was still wet where I had been sitting.

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