Dream d2930-s: Standing in the Pour

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where we reached the main gate of the City of Tansythwaite before the traffic had thinned and stood to one side of the arch. The city was already on the Surveyor's sheet. Its name was there. Its count. Its tier. Its note in the column of places the record had called on and described without entering. The inside of the gate was pouring past us in both directions.

The traffic did not address us. A wool merchant's convoy threaded itself through the arch in pieces and reassembled somewhere further in. Lano tracked it from one end to the other, nose up, ears forward, tail low. Rurik had taken the top of the gate wall and sat there with amber eyes moving across the crowd. He flicked his tail. He washed a paw.

Two columns. The long one: a hundred and twenty-nine places. The short one: forty-eight. Tansythwaite was in the long column. The Surveyor noted this.

A cold house standing dark tells you from the road that it has not been entered. A city lit at every window does not. The counting is the same. The column is the same. The crowd went around us and through the gate and Tansythwaite was still in the long column.

Lano pressed against my leg. After a time she sat down on the stone beside my boot and was still. Low in her throat she made something like ya.

By midmorning we were still to one side. The sheet said what it had always said. I made no new mark in it.

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