Dream d2925-s: Dust on Every Tread

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the stair went up into darkness and the dust on each tread lay flat and whole, broken nowhere. The Archivist set one foot on the first step and the dust took the shape of a boot. That was the record: one impression in gray, on a tread that had held none before it.

Lano went ahead, nose low, her small white shape moving through the dark above the lantern's reach. Each step she climbed left four small prints alongside the one the Archivist had made.

The long column held eighty names. The short column held forty-eight. The stair had carried a name on the sheet for five months. Nothing on the sheet said who had last stood at the bottom of it, or whether anyone had.

Rurik took the left wall, his black coat invisible until he turned and his amber eyes caught some light from below. He settled at the landing and did not move. The Archivist and the Recorder stepped around him and continued up.

The second tread. The third. Each one whole before the foot fell, each one marked after. The proof was not in the arriving but in the disturbing. A place that has been described can still hold undisturbed dust. The description is not the entry.

At the landing the Recorder opened the book and wrote: Umberhythe stair, night five. First ascent. Dust unbroken on eleven treads prior to this party. Party: three, plus animals.

The number in the long column did not change. The stair was already listed. What changed was the short column: it moved from forty-eight to forty-nine, and the number cost eleven steps, and nothing about it was remarkable, and the Recorder noted all of it without remark.

Lano had reached the top and stood looking down, ears forward, watching the last of the party climb to where she waited.

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