Dream d2818-s: The Hand That Halted

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood at the gatepost on the Quillcombe green with the book open against the wood and went through the names in order, checking each against what stood.

The night was mild. The green was dark past the reach of the lantern I had set on the post. Lano sat at my feet for a time and then trotted a short arc through the wet grass and came back, nose pressed to something the dark had left near the fence. Rurik had taken the flat top of the gatepost and sat with his amber eyes on the field beyond the palings.

The book held one hundred and twenty-nine names. Sixty-four had a drawing under them. I checked each name against its drawing and put a mark for fit or no fit and moved on. Sixty-five had no drawing under them at all. For those I looked at the direction the name seemed to point, or at what stood nearest, and put the same mark and moved on.

One name sat apart from the other sixty-four with no drawing. The sixty-four had been set down together in one session, same ink, same pressure; probably one long evening. The one sat earlier in the book, in a slightly different weight of hand, and had waited longer than any of them. I found it. I checked it. The place it named carried one hundred separate pieces of work inside the last thirty days, the busiest of all the waiting names. I noted that. I put the mark and moved on.

Thirty of the waiting names showed a quality of pressure when I held the page toward the lantern, something set down with more attention than the rest. I noted thirty showed it and fifty-four did not. I noted that fifty-four had seen work inside the last thirty days even without a drawing under them. Forty-eight of the waiting names shared a first syllable with a name already drawn. I checked those forty-eight for fit. I moved on.

Lano worried a small stone to the foot of the post. I reached down and set the stone on the low wall and went back to the book. Rurik dropped from the gatepost without sound and went into the dark beyond the fence. I did not watch where.

The hand that had written all one hundred and twenty-nine and then stopped was not present to ask. The book recorded the stopping the way it recorded everything else: the entries ran out and the remaining pages were blank.

I stood at the gatepost until the names were done.

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