Dream d3668-s: Neither More Nor Less

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the shutter had been left unlatched and the draft came and went across my wrists as I worked at the small table. Night outside, and somewhere on the lower road a cart was moving, its wheel-sound arriving late and fading before I could place the direction.

I had sat down with the intention of preparing an answer to carry back. Not a report of discovery - nothing had shifted in the work since the last visit - but the kind of answer that is useful anyway: the true shape of what had been done and what had not.

The census stood at ninety-seven witnessed places. Sixty-six scored but not yet seen. I had not been to those sixty-six, and I would not claim otherwise. The answer I was shaping was the sort that costs nothing except accuracy: I had covered what I had covered, the rest waited, and the waiting was noted and would not be mistaken for completion.

Lano had been asleep in the corner but came to sit beside my chair when I set the pen down. She pressed her nose once against the worn edge of my travelling bag, then settled, chin on forepaws, watching the shutter move in the draft.

The candle had burned past its half mark. I read what I had written. One correction: a count I had entered as sixty-four was sixty-six. I changed it, blew on the ink to dry it faster, read the line again.

Nothing else needed changing. I took the smooth stone from the windowsill and set it on the corner of the paper to hold it flat while the ink finished drying.

The cart was long gone from the road. In the quiet after it I stayed with the corrected count a moment longer. Ninety-seven reached and known. Sixty-six present in the record and no further along than that. Neither number was approximate.

Lano's tail moved once against the flagstones.

That was the answer. It would travel back exactly as it was.

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