Dream d3018-s: The Hedge Closes After

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the lane out of Kestrelfall ran overgrown and the hedge sealed itself behind the party at dusk, branch by branch, the way a hand closes over something it has been holding long enough to forget. Lano trotted ahead with her nose to the ruts and then sat at the first bend and waited for us.

Night eight of eight. The residency closes in the ledger. One hundred and twenty-eight places in the country. Forty-nine walked into, written from inside. Seventy-nine still only a name and a number and a condition observed at a distance. Of those, nineteen standing cold and thirty-four lit and in use. Thirty-two were cited in the record and never once named from inside. The near account, when it arrives, will disagree with all thirty-two.

The Secretary of Standing carried the folded sheets out to the lane while I closed the last shutter. The Clerk had noted, at the foot of one margin, that Lano was buena at this: the finding of a route, the arriving before any map was consulted. Eight nights of that, and the map had been consulted afterward, never before.

Rurik slipped through the hedge to the left before we reached the first gate stone. He does this. He does not require a note.

What was entered and found otherwise: the cold houses were less cold than written; two of the counted partly-fallen had upper rooms sound and in recent use. The busy centre of the settlement called Middle Pasture had fewer daily callers than the far account had supposed, and the lane to the mill had been passable all along, not blocked. Each discrepancy recorded in full. Neither account corrected. Both accounts the same place.

The hedge was behind us and closing, or had already closed. Whether it will be cut next season is not a thing the walker undertakes to know.

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