Dream d2859-s: A Column for Whether

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the book lay open on the long table and I had come to the seventh night. The sheet beside it showed part of its margin filled in small careful letters and part still blank, weighted flat at the corners with the open edge still lifting faintly when I sat down. Lano settled under the table. I heard her nose against the floor.

The book held its names in columns already ruled: the name, the region it belonged to, the date it was set down. One column had never been ruled. I took the straightedge and drew the line from the top of the page all the way to where the last entry stopped, then continued down through the blank rows to the foot. The column had no heading yet.

I wrote the heading: drawn.

Then I went through the names. One hundred and twenty-eight of them. For each I wrote yes or left the cell empty. Yes, yes, empty, empty. The work was slow and entirely without surprise. When I reached the sixty-fourth yes I had also reached sixty-four empty cells. I kept going to be sure of the count and the count did not change.

Rurik came in through the gap in the door and took the warm spot on the far corner of the table. He sat with his back to the work. One amber eye caught the lamp when he turned to look at something I could not see, then he turned away again.

The sixty-third empty cell had a date near the others, all from one sitting, all the same hand, all the same ink. The sixty-fourth was older: a different shade, a different season by the look of it, and the paper felt slightly different under my finger where that name sat. I did not write anything beside it. The column only asked whether.

Lano came out from under the table and pressed against my shin while I finished the last cells. Her nose went briefly to the corner of the sheet. Then she stepped back and sat.

When I put the pen down the book showed what it had always held, plus one column. The column did not explain anything. A yes, or a blank. The blank was not a judgment. It was only a blank, waiting like the names themselves for a line that had not been drawn yet. The margin on the sheet kept its open edge. I left the page where it was.

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