Dream d3232-s: The Ledger Asks Nothing

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where I carried two accounts through Reedhaven in the last hour before the reeds went dark.

The relay clerk had bound them together at the eastern counting house - the stone record from the first reading, each entry dated and signed, and the nine residency accounts with their ninety authored moments, two voices moving through them without either erasing the other. She said nothing when she handed the bundle to me. Lano pressed her nose against the fold of reed-paper and breathed in deeply, as though the dried reeds still held some record of their own.

The absent witness lived three huts past the night warden's post. I had not been told whether she knew I was coming. That was not my concern.

Rurik reached the warden's hut before we did. He had come down from the roof overhang and settled at the threshold, amber eyes fixed on the single lamp burning behind the window glass, one paw folded under his chest. Inside, the warden was bent over the ledger. Her pen was already moving when we arrived - she had heard our steps on the packed earth before we reached her door. The entry was being made while we were still passing, not after. I did not break stride. Lano glanced at the lamp, her tail low and slow, then trotted on ahead. Rurik remained at the threshold until we were well past, then slipped after us without a sound.

At the absent witness's door I knocked twice. She opened it without asking who was there. I extended the two accounts - still bound, still sealed by their own fold - and she received them. Her hands were dry. She looked at the bundle, then at me. Neither of us spoke.

Lano sat at my heel in the road and barked once, low: "ya."

The absent witness held the accounts to her chest and closed the door. I stood in the road for a moment. Behind me, the warden's lamp was the only light still burning in Reedhaven. Whatever the two accounts meant to the one who now held them was not mine to say. I had relayed them intact. The night warden had already noted the passage - in silence, in a ledger I would never read, by the only light there was.

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