Dream d2835-s: One Wrist, Both Sittings

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the smell came up from the settlement before I had the pages open: thin fuel-smoke, the kind that means the tank is drawing on its last depth. I knew it the way a person knows weather, not yet confirmed but already decided, and I held the near pages and the far pages both in my hands at the crest and waited for the night air to tell me more.

Lano sat at my feet. Her ears went flat. She turned her nose to the dark below and made a sound that was not a bark yet, only the beginning of one held back.

Rurik had come up ahead of us both. He was already on the high stone, watching downhill, tail low and still.

I opened the far pages.

The hand was the same hand. This is not a conclusion; it is what the word-stock shows. The near pages name sixty-four places and every one of them has a drawing under it. The far pages name sixty-four places and not one of them has a drawing: the naming ran ahead of the drawing every time, and zero drawn places carry no name, so the naming was always first. What the word-stock proves is that the same person made both sets: the first parts of forty-seven waiting names match first parts already drawn on the near side. The letterforms hold. The spacing holds. The inventory was made by one wrist in two sittings, and sixty-three of the waiting names came down together in the later sitting, while one name is older and has waited far longer than the rest.

I set the near pages beside the far pages on the flat stone and held them even.

One hundred and twenty-eight names in all. Nine hundred and sixty the word-stock could make, and one hundred and twenty-eight is what it has made. Thirty-one of the waiting names carry a light. Fifty-four had work in them in the last thirty days. The busiest of those carries one hundred separate pieces of work in that window, and it has no drawing under it yet. I recorded this and did not weigh it.

Lano barked once. Short, directed downhill.

Below, somewhere in the dark, a shape of light moved and was still. The settlement's generator had been running rough for three days by the count I had before I came up. The salvage parties had returned with half-loads or less each time, and the route they knew reached only as far as the near draw. The cold stores need the lights. The lights need the tank. If the tank drew to empty before a ranging party reached the east cache, the order of failure was already written. The network was built to carry direction further out than the salvage route had gone, but it had not been tested at that distance. Whether it would hold was the question the gauge was asking.

I wrote down what the ranging would need: the east draw marked on the near pages, the network tested at that distance first, the return load calculated against what the cold stores required. I wrote it down as requirement and did not call it a plan.

I did not know what would happen. I wrote it down that I did not know.

The pages are in the same hand. The far pages name sixty-four places and the same person named them who named the near ones, and that person stopped before drawing any of them, and the reason is not written anywhere I can find. I recorded the evidence. I recorded the smell of the thinning fuel. I recorded Lano's bark and the moved light below.

Rurik pressed against my leg once, then went back to watching.

The night held.

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