Dream d3016-s: Line for Line

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I sat at the table in the low room at Kestrelfall on the sixth night and the Surveyor sat across from me, and between us lay two books open to the same page. The lamp was low and steady. Lano was under my chair. I heard her breathing slow. Rurik had taken the top of the cabinet and watched from there, his amber eyes on the middle distance, neither here nor elsewhere.

The first book was the field account - everything written of these places before anyone entered them. The second was the residency log. We read them against each other, line for line. Where they agreed, the Clerk marked the margin: agreed. Where they did not, both were read aloud again and both were copied as they stood.

The field account had called the houses on the north slope cold and partially ruined. The residency log said cold, yes - but structurally sound on three of four walls, with one family still keeping a room in the east end. Both stood. Neither was wrong. Neither was settled.

The field account had said the central square was busy on market days. The residency log said the market had moved to the covered hall to the south, which the field account had not mentioned because the hall had not been built when the survey passed. Both stood. The Clerk wrote: agreed on function; diverged on location.

There were 128 places in the country. Of those, 49 had been walked into and written from inside. For 79, the field account was all there was. The Surveyor read slowly. I turned pages. At some point Lano shifted under my chair and pressed her side against my foot. Quieta. On the cabinet Rurik blinked once and went back to watching nothing.

There was a place in the books called the Cold Weir. Neither account had entered it. Both carried it as a name and a number only. The Surveyor read the line. I read the matching line. They were the same line. The Clerk noted: agreed. We moved on.

There were 32 places that had been called on in the record and never once spoken aloud from inside. When we reached the first of these, the Surveyor paused, then read the line. I read the matching line from the second book. They agreed on the name. They agreed on the number. Beyond that, both books were silent, and silence was what stood.

By the time we reached the eleventh place that night, the lamp needed oil. I trimmed the wick and poured from the jar beside the window. Rurik had come down at some point and was now sitting in the doorway with his back to the room, staring at the far wall of the corridor. That was his way. Lano had not moved.

Where the two accounts agreed it was noted. Where they did not, both stood. Nothing in the disagreement was a failure. Distance flattens things and no one is blamed for that. The entering contradicts the sheet and the sheet remains. Both are the record. Both are true in their time.

We continued until the second jar of oil was low.

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