Dream d3020-s: Through the Unguarded Arch

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the gate to Garnetsquare stood open and nobody came to the post to ask our purpose. The Surveyor walked through first, then the Clerk of Entries with the field book under one arm, then the rest of the party, and Lano came last, trotting through on her own terms with her nose pressed to the gap where the left hinge met the stone. Rurik had slipped ahead through a narrower gap while we were still forty paces off, and by the time we reached the arch he was already sitting on the far side, watching us arrive.

The notes said the square was active at nightfall. The notes were right about the light, which came from three windows and a hanging lamp at the tavern-side. They were right about the cobbles, which are blue-grey and uneven. What they missed is the quiet. The Surveyor's column had the word "animated." The Clerk struck through it with one line and wrote "present" in the margin, which is a different thing.

We walked the perimeter before speaking to anyone. The Clerk read from the notes as we went: the name given at registration, the count of lit windows, the gate condition noted as sound and attended. We checked each item. The gate is sound. The count was right. Only the third item needed amendment, and the Clerk wrote that into the correction column without comment. An attended gate with no attendant is a simple fact of arrival time, not a failure of anything. We wrote it as we found it.

Lano sat down beside a mounting block near the center of the square and lifted her ears toward the tavern door. Nothing came through it. She looked at the door for a long time, then put her chin down on the cold stone and closed her eyes.

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