Dream d3022-s: What the Doorway Gave

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the square in Garnetsquare was quiet at that hour, the market stalls already folded and the town hall windows throwing little light toward the south end. Lano had been trotting ahead for most of the block and slowed at a gap between the ironmonger's building and a low-roofed shed behind it, her nose moving along the base of the wall.

The record held two words for this part of Garnetsquare: outbuildings and disused. I had written that in the dry season, from the road, and the roof had looked settled inward from that distance. It was not settled. The roof was tight. Light came under the door, and a sound - steady, rhythmic - that had no name in the record.

I stood in the doorway. Three people worked at a long table under oil lamps. They did not stop. One held a frame of some material between two dowels and drew it taut with a motion I did not recognize. Another pressed a flat iron tool at intervals against a surface that was neither leather nor cloth. The third sorted what came off the far end into bundles and bound them with cord.

Rurik had slipped through the gap along the wall. He sat at the threshold and went still - amber eyes on the hands at the table - and neither he nor I were acknowledged.

The record said disused. The record was wrong on that count.

I asked the one nearest the door what the work was called. She said a word without pausing. I wrote it in the margin where disused had been: prelling. She did not explain and I did not ask. Lano came in quietly and settled against the wall near the door. The work continued.

The account had a word now that the account had not had before. The place was not what had been written about it. Both of those things stood, and neither one needed correcting beyond the margin note already made.

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