Dream d3014-s: Roofed, and the Date

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the record said the hall at Kestrelfall was open to weather on the north end, roof gone or partly gone, and that was the entry: north wall open, roof compromised, date of survey unknown. I had carried that note four months and had not questioned it.

We entered on the fourth night of residency, which is to say we had been sleeping thirty yards from the door and had not gone in. The Keeper of Surveys pushed it open. Rurik went first, slipping through before the door was fully back, and sat down in the middle of the floor and stared up at the ceiling. That is what the ceiling earned: a cat sitting under it and staring.

It was dry. The floor was bare stone and dry. The roof was whole - not patched, not shored, whole - and the timbers above showed no stain of water. I stood in the middle of the hall and wrote what I had been told to write: roofed. And the date.

Below that I wrote what the record said: north wall open, roof compromised. Both entries are there now, neither is corrected. The Keeper of Surveys said nothing. There is nothing to say. Distance wrote one thing and the doorway is writing another, and both are true of something: one is true of the place as it was known from outside; one is true of the place as it is met from inside. The hall does not explain the difference. Neither do I.

Lano pressed close to my leg and her nose worked along the base of the north wall. The wall is standing. She found a stone near the threshold - small, rounded - and I set it on the sill of the nearest window while she watched. Not a marker. Just a stone placed while a note was completed.

The party stood under the roof. Rurik blinked once, slow. I closed the survey book on the open entry. Night four of eight, hall of Kestrelfall: roofed, and dry, and whole. The far account is still in the record. Nothing is removed. Both stay.

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