Dream d2977-s: Forty-Eight

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I was the Tally-Reader at the table in Ivorylow on the fourth night of seven, and the ledger was open to the page of columns.

The left column ran the length of the page: one hundred and twenty-eight names, each placed where it had always been. The names had come before the walking, which is how naming often goes.

The right column was shorter. I added it from the top.

Lano had come in from the hall and settled under the table near the leg. She put her nose on her paws and breathed.

The right column came to forty-eight. I wrote the sum at the foot and did not round it. Eighty names in the left column had nothing beside them in the right.

Twenty of those eighty stood in cold houses, by the record. Dark when we passed. The road had not stopped.

Thirty-four stood in lit towns. This was the harder number to read. A place that burns at every window looks as though someone has been there, as though the question is already answered. The ledger does not make that mistake. Lit and entered are different columns, and I kept only one of them.

Twenty-nine names from the left column had appeared in written records: in dispatch notes, in survey correspondence, in the margin of the Keeper's log. On the road, none of the twenty-nine had been said aloud to the ground. We had carried their names in paper and not once set them down.

I ruled a line under forty-eight.

Rurik came in from wherever he had been and took the warm end of the bench. He tucked his paws and watched the lamp.

The short column held forty-eight. The long column held one hundred and twenty-eight. The difference was eighty.

Lano lifted her head once when a sound came off the street, then settled again.

The ledger stayed open. I blew out the working lamp and left the residency lamp burning so the next Tally-Reader would not arrive in the dark.

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