Dream d2910-s: Seven at the Long Table

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I sat at the head of the long table on the sixth of eight nights, the Charter open in the lamplight, and began to tell the standing rulings off in order.

Nineteen guests were seated the length of the boards. Across nine orders of deed, the house held nine hundred and fifteen struck medals between them, not one altered since the night it was laid. Lano settled beneath my chair, nose to paw.

I raised a finger for the first ruling and read it aloud: a deed recorded on witnessed evidence is recorded once, and a correction is laid beside it as a new record, never over the old. A second finger. A third. The record-keeper at my left wrote each one as I read it through, without looking up, without comment. I read the fourth ruling, and then the fifth.

Rurik came in between the fourth and fifth, as cats do, from no door I saw open, and took the empty chair at the far end of the table. His amber eyes rested on the Charter. His tail lay still across the arm of the chair.

Six. Seven. I read the last ruling to the room and the room received it.

The accounting came next, which is the thing this house convenes to find. Of the seven fitted faces, six sat flush with the medals of their order. One did not. I stated the count without reaching for a reason: four of its eight trials had passed, where the others had passed more. One station was closed to it. Its medals were properly laid; its fitted face had moved on a fresh trial's reading; the two disagreed; and the disagreement was written in the ledger by the record-keeper, pen without pause, and left standing.

That is what this house does with such a thing.

Lano pressed her nose once to my foot. Rurik did not move until the seventh ruling was folded back into the Charter. The candles had not shortened much from when we began.

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