Dream d2940-s: The Pen Uncapped

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I came into the kitchen of the Ruins of Tarnmere on the fifth night and found the work as it had been left: a pot no longer over heat, a cloth beside the basin half-wrung, and on the table the sheet with its two columns. The long column held every place in the country. The short one ended mid-entry. The pen lay near the sheet, uncapped.

I noted the task: the recording had stopped at the forty-eighth place. I did not note why.

Lano pressed through the door after me, went to the cold corner of the stone floor, and lay down there. Rurik was already on the shelf above the basin, watching the doorway, or watching nothing - the stillness was the same either way.

I took the pen. Into the long column's margin I wrote: fifth night. Residency ongoing. Then I looked at the short column. Forty-eight entries. The forty-ninth place unnamed. I wrote the kitchen in - not as a found thing but as a walked thing: this room, this table, this night, this task resumed. First time entered. Listed nowhere on the short side before tonight.

There was bread on the board, cut to a stopping point. A cup of water, cooled. I noted both as present and noted nothing further. The cloth by the basin: present. The pot: present, cold.

I set the pen down. Lano's ears turned once toward the door and then stilled. Rurik did not move at all. The sheet showed forty-eight places entered and eighty-one not. The Keeper's notes said twenty-one of those stood cold and thirty-five lit. Neither number had changed since I arrived at Tarnmere. They were not mine to change in this room.

The kitchen held what had been left. I held the record of what the kitchen held.

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