Dream d3028-s: The Sheet Has No Second

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where we stood at the door of the second range of Fennmoss and the Threshold-Caller opened the ledger and read the name of the place aloud, and then said: second.

The first range was on the sheet. Its position, its aspect, its north wall and the condition of the lintel - all entered at distance, all written in the column marked far account. The second range was not on the sheet. No position. No aspect. No lintel noted. Nothing marked for it at all, only the knowledge now, standing here, that it exists.

I wrote: second range, Fennmoss. Not on record. Door present. Stone surround, no visible damage. Lintel intact.

Lano moved her nose along the lower edge of the door. Rurik had come through a gap in the wall to the east before we reached the doorway; he sat now at the threshold and stared into the dark beyond it, amber eyes unblinking, tail wrapped around his paws.

The Threshold-Caller waited.

I raised my hand and held it at the door a moment before I pushed it open. This is what entering costs: the near account begins here and cannot be unwritten, and whatever it contradicts in the far account, both stay in the ledger. The sheet said nothing about this range. So the near account opens into absence, not into contradiction - and absence is its own class of record.

Inside: two rooms. The inner wall had been repaired within living memory, the mortar pale against the old stone. The sheet would have said ruin or abandonment if the sheet had found it. The sheet was wrong by omission. I wrote: repaired wall, inner room, mortar recent. Occupation uncertain.

Lano padded in ahead of me and sat down in the middle of the first room. Rurik remained at the threshold, exactly where he had been, staring in.

The near account does not explain the pale mortar. It records it. Someone worked here after the far account decided there was nothing here to work on - or the far account never looked. Both are written. Neither is settled.

The Threshold-Caller closed the ledger on the first range entry and opened a fresh page. Second range, Fennmoss. I dictated what I could see. The night came in around the edges of the door we had left open behind us. Lano turned once, lay down, and was still.

IMAGE: pixel art a second doorway of an old settlement range, a figure standing at it with a hand raised, 8-bit style

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