Dream d2984-s: The Floor as Found

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the Registrar of Entry stood in the front room of Alderbarrow on the fourth night of residency, lamp held low, and read aloud from the field notes: dampness in the boards, grit at the corners, a window frame splitting from its sash. The notes were thorough. They had been made from the road.

The front room was dry. The boards were sound. Someone had swept them, recently and well, and the corners held nothing.

Lano moved ahead of us, nose working the perimeter, tail low and certain. She pressed against the far wall and sat. Rurik had come through the door behind us and now sat in the middle of the floor, washing a paw with the patience of an animal that had been here before.

The Registrar read the field notes a second time, then set them on the sill and opened the ledger. On the left page she copied the notes entire, as they had been made, without correction. On the right page she began the room as it stood: boards dry, corners swept, window frame intact, lamp sufficient. Both pages were dated. Neither was crossed out.

She did not write that the cold houses turn out less ruined than written. She wrote the dimensions of the room and the direction of the window and the fact of the sweeping and the fact that the notes did not describe this. She wrote: field condition and entry condition in disagreement. Both recorded. Neither settled.

Lano trotted once around the room and came back to stand beside me. I put a hand on her back. The lamp threw our shadows up the wall. Rurik held the center of the swept floor with his eyes closed.

---