Dream d2974-s: Lamps at Ivorylow

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the road dropped low and the first lamp came on at the edge of Ivorylow before we had reached the gate.

The Surveyor walked ahead with the ledger open to the column of names. Ivorylow was on the sheet. It had been on the sheet since the count was made in the third month. It had a tier and a population note and a district marking and a small annotation in a different hand that read lamp-town, commercial. All of that was true. None of it was entry.

Lano moved off the road into the verge grass and sniffed along a fence post. Her tail was low and working. The lights in the upper windows were going yellow. A cart passed us going out.

The Surveyor stopped at the margin of the town and drew a line in the short column. Forty-nine. I watched the ink go down. The long column had the town's name already. The short column had not, until that moment. These are the two columns we keep. One fills slowly. One does not.

Rurik had gone ahead. He was sitting in the road where the lamp-light began, watching something in the gutter, his tail moving in a slow arc. He did not look back.

I wrote the date at the top of a new page and the name of the town below it and nothing else yet. The Surveyor said the name aloud, once, to no one in particular, which is how entry is confirmed in this method.

The lamps came on one by one up the main street as we walked in.

Lano found me at the second corner and pressed her side against my leg, nose aimed at the bakery smell coming from the closed shutter of a building on the right. She did not go in. Neither did I, not yet.

Eighty names still on the long column only.

---