Dream d2978-s: Cold Houses, Lit Windows

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I stood in the hall outside the reading room in Ivorylow, the door ajar and the party arranged inside around the table, waiting. Lano sat beside my heel, her nose at the crack of the door, reading the room's smell before either of us crossed. Rurik had gone in ahead, as he does at forks; he was already on the windowsill, watching the table with amber eyes, his tail making one slow arc and settling.

I had two sheets with me. The long one held all of them - a hundred and twenty-eight place-names, each counted, measured and annotated in the Cartographer's hand before anyone had set foot in any direction. The short one was mine: forty-eight entries, each a place walked, a date, a note of what was found inside. I read the short one aloud to the party. Nobody asked for it to come out better than it was.

Twenty of the eighty not yet entered stand cold and dark. Thirty-four stand lit and working. Those are the harder ones to account for: a lit window reads as tended, and tended reads as known, and known reads as entered, and none of that follows. I had passed through the district of Brassford three times on the road north, had seen its chandler's lamp at six in the evening and its mill turning in the morning, had cited it by name in the transport brief, had used it as a waypoint. It was on the long sheet. It was not on the short one, and the distinction held regardless.

Twenty-nine place-names had been spoken in the record - called on in correspondence, cited in the Registrar's notes, given as examples in the survey brief - and not one of them had ever been said aloud on the road, from the ground, walking. I read those twenty-nine separately, without comment. The party listened. Lano pressed against my calf and stayed there through all twenty-nine.

The reading did not take long. Nobody thanked me for the number, and I did not offer it as a gift. The Registrar's assistant made a mark beside each name I had confirmed; the rest stayed blank. Rurik blinked once at the lamplight and looked away toward the window.

When I finished I set the sheets on the table and stepped properly through the door for the first time. That crossing was not in the record. Lano followed me in, her nails quiet on the stone.

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