Dream d2886-s: The Clasp Left Shut

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood in the fitting-room corner on the fourth night of eight, the ledger open at the column for faces and the column for coats.

The room held the smell of pressed linen and the wax the hooks are sealed with each morning. Lano had settled near the baseboard at my left, her nose pointed toward the seventh hook, her breathing slow and even. Rurik had taken the warm cloth folded near the measuring stand and sat there with his amber eyes wide, watching nothing in particular, or everything.

The Warden of the Hook read the count aloud: six faces in their alcoves sitting flush with their measure. Each fitted face checked against the struck medals on the coat, each agreement marked by the Recorder without comment. The pen came back to the same point six times. There was nothing to note beyond the agreement.

The seventh face I lifted from its hook myself. It was marked at the clasp with a small iron disk, stamped with the sign of the closed station, the station the house had retired from service before the last re-cutting of faces. The trial record attached to the back showed four passed of eight. The others carrying this order had passed more.

I laid the face on the fitting table. In the right column I wrote: STATION CLOSED. Then: TRIALS PASSED, 4 OF 8. Then: OTHERS, MORE. Nothing further. The Charter's seven rulings do not require a gloss on a recorded mismatch, and I did not add one.

The Recorder read the three entries back to me. I confirmed them. The Warden lifted the face from the table and returned it to its hook. The clasp did not open. The station it marks has not reopened. Nothing about the face changes the medals on the coat, and nothing about the medals changes the face. The house holds 915 struck medals across 19 guests in nine orders of deed, and not one has been altered. The disagreement is written and left standing, as the Charter requires.

Lano lifted her head once, watched my hand close the ledger, then set her chin back on her paws.

Night four is done. Six flush, one not. The count is recorded.

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