Dream d2956-s: Laid, Never Lit

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I opened the door to the hearth room of the Ruins of Duskden and the room smelled of cold ash and dry pine, though nothing had ever burned there. The fire was laid. Someone had done it carefully: paper twisted in thirds at the bottom, kindling crossed at angles, split logs stacked over them with attention to the gaps. I crouched at the grate with my hands out and felt nothing come back. Lano pressed in beside me, nose working at the edge of the firebox, ears forward, and then she sat and looked at the ash.

I opened my ledger to the page that had carried this place for six months. The Ruins of Duskden, category: residential, status: named, recorded, classified. I looked at the room and then at the page. There is a column for entry. I wrote the date in it.

The hearth had been laid by whoever left. They had done the thing you do when you expect to return: left it ready. Rurik found the spot under the window seat, though there was no warmth in it, and settled himself there as though it were his, amber eyes already closing. I sat on the hearthstone and took out the register.

In the long column: 129 places. In the short column: 49 now, with this one. I wrote Duskden into the short. I wrote the date. I did not write that the fire was cold, or that the room was intact, or that someone had cared for it once. I wrote: hearth room. Fire laid. Fire unlit. And I stopped the sentence there, because that was what was there, and adding to it would have been something other than witnessing.

Lano walked the perimeter of the room once, slowly, nose low. She stopped at the far corner and stood very still for a moment, then came back and lay down against my leg.

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