Dream d3284-s: The Cloth That Came After

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the counting room at Marrowmill smelled of linseed and dry grain, and the new sack hung on its nail as though it had always hung there.

The keeper stood at the tallying shelf with chalk moving in columns. Neither of us mentioned the old sack. I had seen it before - the account written in charcoal, names and measures and one notation that sat apart from the others like a stone set outside a wall. That sack was gone now, the words gone with it to wherever words go when they are read by someone who cannot answer back. The new sack hung blank and rough, its weave loose enough that the lamplight passed through in small amber squares.

Lano moved along the baseboard with her nose pressed to the join between stone and mortar. She found something at the corner - grain scatter, or the sign of mice - and stayed there, her tail moving once, twice, then stilling.

The clerk had his case open on the secondary table and was copying from a smaller ledger into a larger one, not raising his head. The surveyor had not come inside; I could hear footsteps on the boards overhead, systematic, moving toward one wall and back again.

I stood at the nail where the old sack had hung and at the nail where the new one hung, and they were the same nail. The new sack was clean. No writing on it. Whether it would take charcoal again, or ink, or nothing at all, was not a question I was here to answer.

The keeper's chalk moved. The ledger columns filled. Outside in the yard a cart crossed the stone with that particular sound that counting rooms hear all their lives, the sound of things being brought and taken.

Lano moved from the baseboard to the warmth near my feet and settled. Her breathing slowed into the room's own rhythm.

The new sack hung. The room counted on. The account had gone out and been read and Marrowmill had not waited for anything to come back.

---