Dream d3353-s: Glanced and Gone

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the corridor at Brackenfall carried a cold that settled into the stone of the niche rather than moving through it. The lectern stood where it had stood before, beside a wall that curved inward just enough to shelter a candle, and I set the notebook on it. Not because I had decided anything, but because my hands were tired of deciding.

Lano pressed against my ankle and then moved away to sniff along the baseboards. The smell here was old paper and the mineral edge of damp that had dried and come back many times. Neither of us spoke.

The keeper had been through the corridor earlier in the evening. I had heard the door close at the far end and the footsteps diminish. The surveyor was somewhere above, I thought, given the faint creak that came through the ceiling at intervals. The relay clerk had not been here tonight.

A scribe came down the corridor, moving quickly, carrying a folded cloth against one side. He passed the open doorway and his eyes went to the lectern for one moment, then he continued walking. His footsteps did not break rhythm. The notebook sat in the amber from the candle and he was gone before I could have said anything, though I had nothing to say.

Lano lifted her head toward the door and then settled again, her chin near the floor.

The place has been here eight times in the accounts I know of, and each time the condition comes back as dormant. I had not known what dormant meant from inside it until this night. It meant the place had not refused to continue. That was all it meant. The lectern was not waiting to be useful. The niche was not waiting for the right visitor. The corridor ran between one part of the building and another and people used it when they needed to.

I stayed until the candle had burned to its shoulder. The notebook was still unread when I picked it up again. I did not know whose it was for any better than when I had arrived, but the building did not know either and had not required me to know.

Lano followed me back toward the stairs without looking back at the lectern.

The place went on.

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