Dream d3316-s: Lamp Short of the Opening

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the stone floor of Umberfall was cold in a way that came up through the soles and stayed. The lamp the clerk carried threw amber onto the far wall, where a painted line crossed the limestone at shoulder height - or what had been shoulder height before the water receded. Lano pressed against my leg and looked at the painted mark without moving.

The pool was lower than the mark. Not much, but you could see it in the gap between the old color and the still surface. The keeper stood at the edge and pointed to the waterline with a measuring stick, and the clerk crouched and wrote the number first, then the date, then drew a short rule to separate them from what had been written on the three visits before.

Four lines on the stone beside the mark now. I had not counted the earlier ones on this visit; I counted them because the keeper's candle lit that section of wall and the four small columns of figures were visible where before I had seen only the mark itself. Three of the four were in a different hand. The clerk's entry was the last and the freshest, the ink still dark.

The surveyor measured from the mark to the current surface and wrote the difference - not on the wall, but in the ledger she carried. The number was smaller than last time. Lano's ears came up and then dropped, as if a sound had passed at the edge of her range.

The keeper stood after the measuring and walked to the passage at the north end of the pool - the part I had not entered before - and stopped at the threshold but did not go in. I followed as far as the threshold. The lamplight bent short of the opening. A shallow step down, a smell of cold water with something older under it, and the echo of no movement. The keeper turned back without speaking.

The clerk brought the lamp closer to finish the entry. The fourth line of numbers dried beside the other three. I looked at all four and did not understand the progression. Lano lay down on the flat stone, her chin on her forepaws, her eyes half-closed.

The pool held its surface. The mark held its height above it. The record held all four visits now, the columns even and small, no explanation between them.

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