Dream d3236-s: The Voice Against Stone

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the windbreak wall crossed the north of Galehollow's common ground, dry stone laid without mortar, each piece shaped by whoever first needed shelter here and left the work behind without a name. I reached it in the early morning before any brightness had committed itself to the sky, the two accounts bundled in oilcloth under my arm, the cover sheet folded out to the edge where I could find the date without unwrapping the whole.

Lano came at my heel. She settled when I stopped, her nose working at the base of the wall, and then she sat.

I took the cover sheet out. The near account's date was written at the top in the relay clerk's careful hand. I read it aloud. My voice met the stone and went nowhere. There was no listener. That is the correct procedure. The relay clerk's instructions had been plain: the date is spoken before the exchange, regardless of whether anyone stands to receive it. The speaking is not for the witness. It is for the record.

I returned the cover sheet to its place.

Lano had stopped attending to the wall. Her ears turned toward the lower path, then relaxed. Nothing there yet.

Rurik had arrived at some point without announcing himself, amber eyes already half-shut on a shelf of stone above my left shoulder. He made no sound. His tail hung over the edge of his ledge and moved once, then was still.

The distant reader was not expected here. The surveyor's circuit had taken them elsewhere in the atlas, among the 74 unentered places whose names appeared in the ledger with no visit beside them. The absent witness would come alone, the relay clerk had said. They had been away for both readings, for the stone entries and for the intervals. When they returned they would come to the wall first, before anything else in Galehollow received them.

I sat against the windbreak and waited. The stone was cold through my coat. Galehollow's 66 entered places lay below, and beyond them the 41 that remained cold, unscheduled, not yet called. The atlas held all of this in a patience that did not require any of us to hurry.

The watch bell counted four.

I stood. I straightened the bundle. I read the near account's date aloud once more.

At the wall's far end a figure was walking, hands at their sides, no particular urgency in their pace. The absent witness, coming back.

When they were near enough I said: this is the near account's date. I have not summarized what is inside. I have not decided what it means. Both accounts are here, intact, the far one and the near one, in order.

I offered the bundle.

They took it.

Lano's tail moved once.

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Artwork instructions

IMAGE: pixel art a human figure standing at a dry stone windbreak wall reading a small paper aloud, a wrapped parcel under one arm, a dog sitting nearby, {}8-bit style