Dream d3006-s: Past the Last Column

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the Surveyor of Entries and I came to Vespersquare on the third night of the residency and walked the market street from the northern post to the southern gate, and the sheet was correct on all points: the breadth was as noted, the number of open stalls was within range, the noise was full as described, and the character of the goods - cloth on the west side, provisions on the east - matched the original entry without revision required.

Lano trotted beside me with her nose low, reading the ground rather than the stalls.

I wrote in the margin: confirmed, first-hand, third night.

Then I looked up from the sheet and looked past the last stall and realized I had no entry for what lay behind the street. No entry for the lane to the left. No entry for the court behind the cloth sellers. No entry for the upper rooms visible from here, lit in some windows and dark in others. The sheet described a street. The street was described. The description stopped exactly where the street stopped and the street did not stop.

I said to the Surveyor of Entries: was this filed as complete? The Surveyor of Entries checked the original filing date, which was ten months prior, and said: it was filed as complete.

We stood at the edge of the known face of Vespersquare and looked at the unlisted interior. It was not ruined. It was not hidden. It had simply not been looked at, and no entry marked the gap, and no one had returned to look until now.

I opened a new column on the sheet. I wrote: the market street of Vespersquare: described. The interior behind the market street: not entered, not described, status unknown. I drew a line across the page indicating where the previous account ended and where the current observation began.

Lano sat at the mouth of the first unlisted lane and waited. Her tail moved once. Her ears stood. The lane was not on the sheet and she waited at it with no opinion about that.

I wrote: three streets visible from the market, names unknown, not previously entered. Beginning enumeration.

The sheet had been correct. The sheet had also been unfinished, and no one had noticed the unfinished part because the finished part looked complete from the outside. A complete-looking page is not a complete account.

I wrote that also, in small letters at the foot of the old column: the account of this place was accurate to its own extent. The extent was smaller than the place.

Lano padded into the first unlisted lane and I followed her, writing as I went.

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