Dream d2854-s: The Names Outran the Map

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the table in the map room held two stacks of paper and a lamp set low enough to read by, and the Archivist and I sat across from each other on the second of eight nights, pulling names from the book one at a time and setting each to its column.

The left column took every name that now had ground drawn under it. The right column took every name that did not. We did not hurry. The room was quiet except for the sound of paper on wood and Rurik settling into the warm place beside the lamp, his amber eyes half-closed, his tail curled over his paws.

When the book was done the left column held sixty-four names. The right column held sixty-four names. I counted the left twice. The Archivist counted the right. We arrived at the same numbers both times.

I wrote in the ledger: sixty-four names, ground drawn; sixty-four names, ground not yet drawn. Zero drawn places carried no name. The naming had come first in every case.

Lano padded in from the door and pressed against my leg while I wrote, her nose toward the right column. She held very still. I did not explain the column to her.

One of the sixty-four waiting names was older than the others by a long measure. The remaining sixty-three had been set down together in a single sitting. I recorded the older name first in the ledger, then the sixty-three below it as a group, with one line between them.

Forty-seven of the waiting names shared a first part with a place already drawn. The Archivist went through them with a finger, one by one, saying nothing. I wrote forty-seven in the margin.

The busiest of the waiting names had a hundred separate pieces of work sitting inside it from the last thirty days. I wrote that number beside the name and did not underline it.

Rurik jumped from the table to the windowsill and sat with his back to us, looking out. Lano watched him go, then settled at my feet.

The word-stock held room for nine hundred and sixty names. The book had made one hundred and twenty-eight. I closed it and set it at the top of the table between the two columns.

The lamp burned steadily. The Archivist closed the ledger. I set down the pen.

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