Dream d2941-s: Below Where the Map Ends

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the Surveyor had named the cellar on the sheet - stone floor, below the hall, adjacent to root-storage - but the sheet stopped at the landing. Below the landing: no room, no measure, no word.

I lit the lantern at the top of the stair.

Rurik slipped past before I could move and went ahead into the dark; his amber eyes caught the light once and were gone. Lano pressed against my left leg until I took the first step, and then she followed, her nose working the cold air, her nails nearly silent on the wet stone.

I counted. Nineteen steps.

The Surveyor had written no number.

The room at the bottom was not a failure of the sheet. The sheet held what had been entered, and this had not been entered. A stone arch, low enough to duck under. A floor that had been swept at some time and not recently. Three shelves on the wall, one shelf on the floor, on its side. No lamp-hook. No window. Air that had not moved in a long time.

I wrote in the short column: Ruins of Tarnmere, sub-landing. Night 6 of 8. Nineteen steps from the hall. One room. One arch. Three shelves upright, one fallen. Floor cold, swept, bare. Still air. No hook, no window, no water.

Lano crossed the room in slow arcs, nose to the stone. She stopped at the fallen shelf. She made one sound, low and brief - oscuro - and sat.

Rurik had found a stone ledge above the arch that I had not seen. He settled there and watched without blinking.

The lantern lit a circle. Past the circle: the dark the map had no word for. I did not name it. I had not been far enough in to know what name it might take. I wrote instead: beyond lantern-reach, unnamed; requires further entry.

The long column: 129. The short column: 49. Tarnmere cellar, sub-landing, entered, night 6.

The arch held. The stair remained above. The room had been here the whole time.

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