Dream d2921-s: Written From This Road

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the road bent and the Ruins of Umberhythe were there, exactly as they appeared on the sheet: the rise, the dark window-line, the gap in the eastern wall where the upper course had come down at a right-to-left angle. I stood at the bend and read the Registrar's notes against the house and found them accurate to the distance of one road-width. Four window openings at irregular intervals. A notation of the wall-fall. A coordinate pair. A small sketch in someone's hand.

Below the sketch, in a different ink, a line that read: described from road approach, eastern face. Entry not recorded.

The description had been written from this road. It had never been written from inside.

Lano pressed against my leg and looked up at the rise. Her nose worked at something coming from the gap. Rurik had gone ahead and was sitting in the road directly before the path, his back to us, amber eyes fixed on the dark opening in the wall.

I had carried this accurate account for months in the long column. I had read it back to the survey three times and found no error. The sheet called it documented. The short column had no entry.

I wrote: arrived at the Ruins of Umberhythe, night one of eight.

Then I walked up the path. Lano followed. Rurik did not move from the road; he turned and sat facing the other direction, watching the way we had come.

The inside differed from the outside in the ways any inside differs from any outside. Open sky where the roof had been. A floor-level lower than I had imagined from the rise. The gap in the eastern wall was wide enough to have entered without ducking; I had ducked anyway.

I noted these things in the short column. The description on the sheet remained accurate. It described this ruin from the road, from the only angle the describer had stood at. From inside, there was more to say, and none of it had been said.

I wrote it.

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