Dream d3334-s: The Ledger's Own Gap

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the clerk office in Ironfall smelled of old metal and paper left too long in a drawer. The relay clerk stood behind the counter with the ledger flat on both palms, the way a person carries something that is not theirs to keep. Lano had stopped at the threshold and was reading the floor with her nose, moving in small arcs from the door to the edge of the mat, unhurried.

The ledger was heavy. I could see that before I took it - the covers warped slightly at the spine, the way moisture works on bound things over years. The relay clerk did not let go immediately. There was a moment where both of us were holding it and the lamplight caught the gilt lettering on the cover, nearly worn to nothing.

Three visits before this one. The first in the wet season, when forge sounds carried through the wall. The second when the surveyor measured the door frame and found it had settled a quarter-inch since the original map. The third when the distant reader stood at the window and read the sky aloud to no one in particular. The account had traveled. What came back was not a letter but the fact of having been read.

The keeping shelf ran along the east wall, low enough that Lano could have rested her chin on the second shelf if she had chosen to. She didn't. She had moved to the corner near the cold hearth and sat watching the relay clerk with her ears slightly forward, tail still.

Ironfall was dormant. The forge had been cold for two seasons. The keeper stood near the shelf and said nothing while I placed the ledger in the gap where it fit exactly, where the dust had held its shape. The gap was the same size it had always been. That was the whole of the record for this visit: the ledger returned, the gap receiving it, the shelf going on.

The surveyor wrote the date in the margin of the secondary log. The distant reader stood at the window again. The lamp burned without flickering because there was no wind from anywhere in the building.

Lano stood up from the corner and walked to the door and waited there. I looked once more at the shelf before I followed her out into the night of Ironfall, which was the same quiet it had always been, dormant and present and without any need of reply.

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