Dream d3039-s: Seventy-Two Still Outside

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the Surveyor stood in the yard of Brackenbrook and read the count aloud. Eight entered. Seventy-two not. No rounding. The figures gathered in the yard listened without correcting him. Lano sat at the edge of the yard where the gate had been left open, and her ears came forward when the Surveyor said the number eight.

The tally had been prepared by the Clerk from both accounts: the one made at distance, and the one made at the doorway. Where the two accounts disagreed, both were written in full, the near one first and the far one below it, with a line drawn between them. The Clerk did not choose between them. Neither was removed. The Surveyor read only the near account aloud; the far one sat in the ledger beneath it, not crossed out, not resolved.

Rurik moved along the low wall at the yard's edge and sat when the Surveyor reached the number of unentered places: seventy-two. His tail moved once and was still.

Three of the eight that had been entered were colder inside than the far account said they would be. Two were warmer. Three were as described. The Clerk had written all of this. The Surveyor read none of it; he had only the count tonight, and the count was what had been asked for.

Lano pressed against my leg and I put my hand on her back and kept it there while the Surveyor read out the breakdown: of the seventy-two not yet entered, nineteen stand cold and thirty-three stand lit and working, and thirty-three had been called on in the record and never once named from inside. The last number was read without emphasis. It was not larger than it was.

The yard was quiet when the reading finished. No one spoke to contest the number or to ask what the plan was. The count had been asked for and the count had been given. Lano lifted her nose toward the gate and the road beyond it, where seventy-two places were, and then she turned back and sat down again.

The far account is kept. The near one, where it exists, goes first. That is all that was settled tonight.

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