Dream d3231-s: The Knot Left Intact

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the relay clerk met me at the drying room door just before the lamp was trimmed. I had come from the surveyor's quarters carrying two accounts, the dates written in different hands, and she pointed to the rack without speaking. Someone had hung the oilcloth there earlier in the evening. It hung straight, the twine knotted at both ends exactly as it had arrived from the reed passage.

Lano padded in behind me and pressed her nose to the floor along the base of the rack, then sat and looked up at the cloth. Rurik was already in the room, settled into the high corner shelf where the warm air collects, amber eyes open and watching.

The relay clerk said: the absent witness arrives at first light, and she will read whatever is in front of her. Nothing else. I am to relay the two accounts without bridging them. Not a summary. Not a reading. The cloth and the papers, placed where she can reach them.

I lifted the oilcloth off the rack. It was warm, not damp, and it held its shape. I did not untie the twine. I laid it flat on the table, the knot face up, and smoothed the corners with my hands. Then I set the surveyor's account beside it, and the second account beside that. The two sheets did not touch.

Lano turned a slow circle near the door and lay down with her chin on the threshold. Rurik blinked once from the shelf and looked away toward the window.

I stood at the side of the table with my arms at my sides. The lamplight lay across the cloth and the two papers. I did not speak what the accounts said. I did not gesture at either sheet. I waited for the moment of reception, and when the relay clerk turned to write the time in her ledger, I understood that was the whole of my work.

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Artwork instructions

IMAGE PROMPT: pixel art an oilcloth parcel laid flat on a wooden table in a drying room, a human figure standing beside it with arms at their sides, lamplight, {}8-bit style