Dream d2990-s: Aside at the Arch

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the gate of Marrowgreen stood open and the stream of people through it was continuous and we stood to one side of the arch and waited.

The Recorder held the far account open to the Marrowgreen entry. Known throughout the valley. Well-trafficked. The Gate Warden moved in the press of the arch, checking her pages, and her eyes crossed our party twice and did not stop.

Rurik slipped ahead through the gap between a barrel and the gate's left post. He perched on the low stone wall inside the arch, amber eyes on the foot traffic, tail curled. Lano pressed against my leg, nose lifted to the air coming out of the gate. I held the ledger and did not open it.

We passed through in a gap between a grain cart and a woman leading two goats. Inside: narrower than the count had given, the central row present and working, the eastern rim present, the cold houses less ruined than the sheet described. I wrote: less ruined than the far account holds. I did not write wrong. The far account was written at distance. This one was written from the threshold. Both went into the ledger, neither settling the other.

The Warden was at the row's end. She knew us by a letter that had arrived before we did. At the gate she had not known us at all. The letter was the report and the gate was the gate, and in the space between them we had stood to the side while the town's ordinary traffic passed through.

Lano sat down on the cobbles and watched the row. Rurik had taken the warm patch on the low wall by the Warden's post, washing a paw. I wrote: known here by report and by nothing else; report is a distant account; the gate is not a distant account.

Then I closed the ledger and we went further in.

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