Dream d2975-s: The Shape Before Checking

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood on the first street of Ivorylow and knew, before I opened the sheet, that I had not entered it.

The lamps were burning. Figures passed in both directions. A delivery was being made at a side door. Voices from an upper window - something rehearsed, in overlap - and below them a cloth stall in colours I could not name from where I stood.

Lano pressed against my left ankle and held still. Rurik had gone ahead three paces and sat down facing the street.

Forty-eight places entered. Eighty not. Of the unentered: twenty cold and dark, thirty-four lit and working. This one was lit. This one was working. This one had not been entered.

I opened the record and made the entry: Ivorylow, first street, night two of seven. Not a description of the cloth or the voices. Not a judgment. The fact of having stood here, with the lamplight and the ordinary business of the town moving past on both sides.

Rurik blinked once at a pair of boots that passed close to his nose. He did not move.

A place that reads as tended reads as known. That is the harder shape. I have walked past enough of them now to recognise it before I check. The recognition came here before I opened the sheet.

Forty-nine places entered. Seventy-nine not.

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