Dream d2988-s: Two Lines, Neither Struck

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where we left Alderbarrow on the eighth evening and the Ledger Clerk wrote while walking, which is difficult, the road surface changing without announcement. Lano trotted ahead, nose low, tracking something in the verge. Rurik went ahead at the fork and sat in the center of the left-hand way until we took it.

The sheet had Alderbarrow's mill as collapsed. The near account puts it at standing - wheel present, millstone absent - which is not the same as collapsed. The Ledger Clerk added a second line beneath the original entry. Neither was struck through.

Of the forty-one structures the sheet had counted, the entering found thirty-nine standing, one foundations-only, and one that was not a structure at all but a retaining wall the first surveyor had tallied separately on a day of poor light. The Ledger Clerk wrote this correction. It took the length of three bridge planks to get it down in full.

Lano doubled back and pressed against my leg for a moment, tail going, then moved ahead again.

The Record of Entry for Alderbarrow will carry both tallies without remark. It will not name one correct. A place counted from the road and a place counted from the inside are two measurements made with two different instruments, and no instrument here is the standard.

At last light the road bent left and Alderbarrow went behind the treeline. The Ledger Clerk closed the second page without reading either account back aloud.

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