Dream d2902-s: The Coat That Waits

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where a cold draft ran ahead of me through the hall before the door had fully opened, and by the time I reached the window the coat was already still again on its hook - one side heavy with its medals and the other holding the fitted face that no longer agreed with them. Lano padded in after me and sat a little distance from it, nose lifted once, then lowered.

The Registrar had left the column open on the table: the seventh order, the one against which this coat had been measured and found mismatched. I read the line entered by the previous night and made no mark beside it. The night's instruction was to leave it there.

Somewhere in the long hall behind me a door settled shut. I heard the Charter creak on its pins - seven rulings, none of them amended since they were set - and then quiet again.

I walked the full length of the coat without touching it. Eight trials recorded in the register's column: four passed where the others had passed more. The station beside the coat, the one the fitted face no longer held, showed its closure mark and nothing else. I wrote the date beside that mark and stopped writing.

Lano moved once around the base of the hook, unhurried, and pressed close against my leg. The coat did not move.

The Registrar arrived at the far end of the hall, carrying nothing. We stood on opposite sides of the window. The light came through at its sixth-night angle, falling across the mismatched shoulder. Neither of us spoke. There was nothing to say that the register had not already said.

I wrote the final line in the column: Nothing in this coat is being corrected tonight.

Then I set the pen down, and Lano and I walked back through the hall.

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