Dream d2866-s: A New Medal Beside

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the smell of hot lamp oil reached me before the doors were drawn back - that particular warmth that says a gathering has been sitting and breathing for some time already.

Inside, the long hall was lit to its corners. Nineteen guests sat at the long table, the chairs all taken, and the faces had not yet come out. The Keeper of Faces stood at the far end with the seven face-cases closed before her on the cloth, and the Charter was pinned above the table with its seven rulings in plain view. Lano had come in ahead of me and was already at rest under the nearest bench, nose pressed flat to the boards, reading whatever the boards held.

The Warden of Medals spoke before anything else was touched. He said what he says every night before the fitting, which was this: a medal, once struck on witnessed evidence, is never altered afterward. Not corrected. Not withdrawn. Not re-struck with a softer or harder reading. If the record is wrong, a new medal is laid beside it, and that new medal records the correction as its own deed - but the first medal stands as struck and will always stand so. Nine hundred and fifteen medals hang on the coats in this room, in nine orders of deed, and not one of them has been touched since the evening it was given.

He said it the way a warden says something he is required to say: plainly, without ceremony, and without looking up from the ledger.

The fitting began.

Six of the seven face-cases opened flush. The Keeper held each face to the lamp before she carried it to the seated guest, and for six orders the measure on the face and the medals on the coat said the same thing, or near enough that her hands did not slow. Six orders, six faces settled without pause.

The seventh came from the last case.

The Keeper held it up and it had moved since the previous reading - not wrongly, but because the trial that measures it had run again and the face goes where the trial puts it. A moved face onto a coat that had not changed, because coats do not change. She carried it to the seventh guest and settled it as she had settled the others: without comment.

I wrote in the ledger: one face moved. One station closed - the station this face, at its present position, does not open. Four of eight trials passed where others in that order had passed more. Mismatch between coat and face: noted. Not explained. Not graded. Not blamed.

The medals cannot be re-struck to fit a face that has been re-cut. The face cannot be re-cut without a trial that has not been held. So the disagreement is written down and left standing.

Lano's tail moved once under the bench. Then she was quiet again.

The Charter's seven rulings stayed pinned above the table through all of it. They were not reviewed at that hour; they were simply there, the way settled things are there - not to be consulted but to be seen.

The Keeper closed the last case. The lamps had burned down a half inch since the doors were drawn back.

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