Dream d3519-s: What the Square Keeps

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the ink on the sheet had not yet dried when the clerk folded the ledger shut. The cover came down with a soft percussion, the sound of something that has been opened and closed ten thousand times and knows the motion without resistance. Dunnesquare lay ahead in lamplight that came from somewhere I could not locate, pooling on the marker stone without casting shadows.

Lano padded ahead of me and stopped at the stone's edge, her nose lifted. The entry-keeper had already gone. The keeper stood at the far side of the square, saying nothing, not moving toward us or away.

I set the sheet on the stone. The date in the upper corner, the raked lines of the square's name below it, the description of the joint where two courses of paving met at the crease the square had held since before the record opened. The sheet lay flat, weighted by nothing except the air pressing down evenly on everything.

Lano gave a small sound, not a bark, something between breath and voice. She sat down beside the stone and watched the sheet.

The keeper did not approach it. He turned and walked toward the far edge, his back to us, returning to whatever he had been doing before we came. The lamplight shifted slightly, or the night shifted, and the sheet lifted at one corner and set itself back down.

"Bien," Lano said, almost to herself.

The clerk was already three steps away, the ledger tucked close. I followed. Behind us, Dunnesquare went on. The paving held the sheet the way it held rain and the feet of whoever passed through - not with attention, not with care, but with the specific neutrality of things that have been there longer than the records about them.

I did not look back. Lano trotted beside me, her nails light on the stone, her tail describing a slow arc. The square had the sheet now. It would do with it what the square did with everything left in it: keep it or release it in some weather we would not be there to witness, on a morning the record would not open on, in a condition the ledger had already closed.

The seven-night residency held in its last hours. The clerk walked ahead toward wherever clerks go when the writing is done.

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