Dream d3190-s: The Road Keeps a Third

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the Horizon-Surveyor folded the first account and slid it beside the second in the same oilcloth sleeve, and the road out of Yarrowfold began before we had finished counting the dormant gates. The Tally-Reader did not round the count. Eight witnessed visits, and the number sat in the ledger uncorrected.

Lano trotted ahead, her nose low to the gravel, ears swiveling at the sound of the pale cyan seam hissing faintly in the cold stone wall we passed on the left. The Anomaly-Hand paused long enough to mark the seam's position in the margin of my page. I held the page flat against the wind. The emission was not loud and we did not stop for it.

Rurik had found the warm top of the last wall post at the boundary. He sat there as we passed beneath him, amber eyes fixed on the road's midpoint, tail flicking once before he dropped silently to the ground to follow from behind. He pressed briefly against the Bedrock-Reader's ankle, then picked his own line through the verge grass.

The Warden of the Deep Stratum was already at the first turn when the rest of us cleared the boundary. She had not written anything yet. The machinery we had logged in Yarrowfold remained uninterpreted, and she carried that fact the way a stone carries its own weight.

The Relic-Watcher carried both accounts. I asked if one of them should go to the absent third, the one who had been allocated this road without arriving to read it. She said the allocation was a notation, not a delivery, and she kept both records close.

Lano stopped at the first milestone, dropped to sitting, and watched the road ahead without moving. After a moment she made one soft sound - vaya - and rose to trot on.

The Tally-Reader walked beside me and said nothing. The count was accurate. Yarrowfold stayed dormant behind us. The next road held the name of someone neither account had witnessed, and we carried both forward without making them into one.

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