Dream d2819-s: Asked End to End

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I started at the top of the hill with the book open to the margin column and Lano loose at my heel, and worked the street down to where the cobbles went flat at the mill gate. Rurik had taken a sill above the chandler's and watched us pass without moving.

The book had the written word in the left column and a blank line beside it for the local one. I asked the first person I found, a woman with a basket going back uphill, what she called this part of the town. She said something I wrote out as best I could in the margin. Two syllables, the second one clipped, different from the book's word.

At the baker's a man gave me the book's word back, unchanged, the way you say a word when you learned it from a sign rather than from anyone's mouth.

At the cobbler's I had to explain the question twice. He gave me a word I had heard the street over, which I had already written down as a district name, something wider. I put a bracket around his answer and a note beside it.

The chandler was closing up. She gave me three versions, one after another, and said she could not choose between them. I wrote all three. Rurik blinked from the sill and turned his head the other way.

By the tannery gate I asked a boy carrying water. He gave me the same two syllables the first woman had, the same clipped second part. I put a tick beside the first entry.

At the mill gate, last door, a woman of some age spelled out for me the version her mother had used, which differed from the book's word by one vowel only. She said the book's word too, without being asked, and said they were the same thing said by different people. I put both down, on separate lines.

Seven asked. Five answers. One match to the book, clean. One match after a fashion. Three that were their own thing entirely.

Lano sat down at the mill gate. Her tail moved once. I closed the book on both columns and we went back up the hill.

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