Dream d3193-s: Red at the Cover's Edge

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the relay office in Thornhollow kept only one lamp burning, and I came through the door with the parcel pressed against my side and the cover sheet loose in my other hand. The relay clerk was already standing at the desk, the stamp raised, waiting.

Rurik entered ahead of me, as he does at every threshold in Thornhollow. He sat in the doorway for a moment, amber eyes moving from the lamp to the ledger to the clerk's raised hand, then slipped inside and took the warm spot beside the lamp's base.

Lano settled at my heel. She had followed me from the surveyor's hall all the way down the narrow street and was quiet now, watching the clerk the way she watches anything about to do something deliberate.

I set the cover sheet on the desk. The clerk read it without speaking - two accounts, both dated, the stone entry from the first reading and the intervals from the second, both signed, neither crossed out. I had written nothing to explain them. The sheet did not need explaining.

The clerk inked the stamp and brought it down.

Red, the way I expected. Today's date.

Rurik's tail moved once, slowly, as the stamp hit.

The clerk folded the cover sheet around the parcel, sealed it with a strip of red tape from the desk drawer, and placed it in the outgoing tray. The absent witness's address was already written on the front in a hand I did not recognize - which is how relay works in Thornhollow: the address travels separately from the sender, so the sender cannot revise it.

Lano sniffed the edge of the tray. She did not touch the parcel.

I signed the departure log - the date, the contents, the office of origin - and the clerk counter-signed below me without looking up. The lamp threw our shadows large across the ledger wall.

I did not know when the absent witness would open it. I did not know what they would make of an unreckoned stone and nine residencies arriving together without a letter of context. The cover sheet held the dates and the signatures. The rest was theirs to receive.

Rurik washed a paw.

The clerk blew on the ink to dry it and closed the log.

Outside, Thornhollow was quiet. The parcel sat in the tray with its red tape and its unknown address, stamped and dated, ready to depart.

---