Dream d2955-s: Still in the Long Column

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood at the threshold of the main house at the Ruins of Duskden and did not cross it.

The step was there. The frame was there. The dark inside was the dark of a place that has not been entered, which is a different dark from the dark of a place that has been left. I know the difference and I recorded it in the ledger I carry: unentered. Fifth night of eight. The main house at the Ruins of Duskden: still in the long column.

Lano sat at my heel and watched the doorway. Her ears were up. After a moment she pressed her nose to the stone of the step and then withdrew it, and that was her accounting of the threshold.

Rurik had gone ahead. He had slipped through the gap where the door sat loose in its frame, the way a cat finds a gap without looking for one. He was inside and I was not, and the ledger does not count a cat's crossing.

The First-Footer's office requires saying the name aloud before a place is entered, and I said it: Duskden. The word went out into the dark of the doorway and came back unspent, because the crossing did not follow it. Said and true: unentered. I said it again to be sure. It was true again.

I stood there long enough to take the count I was owed. The lintel: intact. The frame: sound on the left hinge, split at the top of the right. The step: one stone, no crack. The door: loose but hanging. Everything in the record matched what I was looking at. The Ruins of Duskden was as described. Not entered. Described.

The long column holds 81 places. The short one holds 48. The main house threshold has not been crossed on any of five nights. The word has been said. The word has been true.

Lano leaned against my calf. I held the ledger and did not go in.

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