Dream d2830-s: The Margin Stays Open

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood at the gate of Willowden on the eighth evening, the last, with the road running out of it into dusk. Lano pressed against my left leg. I felt her warmth there while I opened the book one more time at the edge of the city.

Two more names had gone in that afternoon, in the same hand as all the others. The first carried a first part it shared with a place already drawn, a kinship it had not chosen. The second was shorter and carried nothing shared. Both were set down cleanly. Neither had a drawing under it.

I counted before I closed the book. Sixty-four names with drawings. Sixty-six with none.

The book was still ahead.

Lano lifted her nose briefly in the direction of the road, then dropped it. Rurik had taken the warm flat stone near the gatepost. He sat there with his amber eyes on the middle distance, neither watching me go nor watching anything else I could name.

The gate was open. No one closed it at dusk in Willowden. The road ran through into country that was old and named and dark, and the book I carried held more of it than the sheet did. That was the work and also the remainder of the work. One preceded the other, here as everywhere, and the one that came first was words.

I walked through. Lano trotted beside me on the stones. I did not look back at Rurik. When I turned once to check the road behind me he was gone from the gatepost already, or had always been.

Sixty-four drawn. Sixty-six waiting. The margin on three sides stayed open.

---