Dream d2888-s: The Gap Left Standing

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I was seated at the fitting-room table on the sixth night, a lamp pulling a tight oval of light across the sheet in front of me, and I had been given one task: write up the closed station on the one face that moved.

The Charter hung above the table on a wooden rod, its seven rulings visible in order, the ink on each one dry for longer than anyone at the table had been counting. I did not read them aloud. I was here to write, not to interpret.

Lano padded in behind me and settled beneath the table on the left side, her nose resting on her front paws, her eyes tracking the lamp's edge where it cut against shadow.

The house holds nine orders of deed. In six of those orders the face fitted to each guest runs flush with the medals on their coat: the trial says the same thing the struck record says, and there is nothing to note. I had confirmed all six this evening before I reached the table. Six sheets, each clean, each closed without remark.

The seventh face did not run flush.

I wrote that at the top of the record sheet, plain and without expansion. Nineteen guests carry nine hundred and fifteen medals between them in this hall, struck one by one on witnessed evidence, not one altered afterwards. A correction is only ever a new medal laid beside the old. The medals from the fourth order of deed sat where they had always sat on the coat of the guest in question. They were there before tonight and they will be there tomorrow.

What the face changes is the station.

I wrote that next. The station at the top of the fourth order is closed to this face at this measure. That is what the trial returned. I wrote the trial number, the night of running, the count of the eight tests that comprised it: four passed, four not, and the others in the hall who hold faces in the same order had passed more. I wrote the count as I found it. I wrote nothing after the count.

Lano lifted her head when I set down the pen to blot the page. Her ears went up for a moment, then settled. She put her chin back down.

The mismatch stands in the record now. The medals are there. The face is where the trial put it. The station is closed. These three things sit on the same sheet and none of them cancel the others. That was the task.

Rurik was on the beam above the Charter when I turned, amber eyes open, watching the lamp. He had been there the whole time, I think. He did not move when I pushed back the chair.

I left the record on the table. That is where it stays.

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