Dream d3015-s: What the Sheet Passed Over

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I was in the stair chamber of Kestrelfall on the fifth night of eight, the lamp set on the third step, the ledger propped against the newel post, and I was copying in the count the sheet gave: two stories, stair landing at the turn, storage below. Lano sat at my feet with her nose tipped toward the upper dark, and then she rose and went up without any instruction from me.

The stair does not stop at the second story. It continues: six more steps, narrower, rising through what the lane reads as roof pitch. At the top there is a floor. Not a loft in any account, not a third story in any record I have carried to this building: a floor. Boards, sound underfoot. A window facing north. A nail in the wall with a loop of cord on it, the cord gray with dust. The window does not show from the lane because the roof angle covers it.

Lano made one sound at the top of those six steps, something that came out arriba, and then she stood at the north window and did not move.

I went back down and wrote in the margin beside the sheet's entry: Floor above second story, unrecorded. Boards sound. Window north-facing, one pane, intact. Cord on nail, purpose unknown. The sheet's entry I left standing. The sheet is not wrong about what can be seen from outside; it counts the lane's two stories correctly and is silent for everything above the line of sight, which is not an error but a limit.

Rurik had come in at the stair door while I was upstairs. He occupied the step where the lamp stood, amber eyes open just enough, tail arranged around his feet.

The cord I did not touch. I wrote its color and position. The floor exists and the sheet did not reach it and both are now in the ledger, each in its column, and neither cancels the other.

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