Dream d3709-s: Neither Tally Corrects

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where two of us stood in the doorway of a low building in Dunnebarrow, not quite inside and not quite out. The other worker had come from the western quarter carrying a worn bag with a brass clasp that no longer closed properly; it hung open against her hip, papers folded and tucked rather than fastened.

She had a number. I had a number. Neither of us had spoken them aloud yet.

The daylight came from behind us, soft and even, the kind that makes slate look warmer than it is. I could see the grain of the stone in the walls, the pale ochre of the mortar between the courses, older work that had been pointed and re-pointed until the joins stood proud of the face.

She set her bag down and drew out a folded sheet. I had mine in my coat pocket. We unfolded them at the same moment without planning to.

Her count was sixty-one. Mine was fifty-eight.

We looked at both sheets. We did not argue. There are places that resist a single count because they are not yet fixed - a yard that opens at one end, a passage that might belong to the dwelling beside it or to the one beyond. Three places could plausibly fall either way, depending on which boundary you walked first.

She had walked the eastern end first. I had come from the river.

That was the whole of the difference, probably. We both understood this without saying it. She folded her sheet. I folded mine. Neither of us marked the other wrong.

A man carrying a length of rope passed behind us on the lane, moving without urgency. The rope trailed over his shoulder and the loose end dragged in the dust. He did not look up.

I thought about the sixty-eight unwitnessed places - not abstractly, but as a fact that our two tallies were both trying to reach toward from different directions. Sixty-one and fifty-eight were not a contradiction. They were two distances from the same gap, measured by different feet.

She picked up her bag and the brass clasp knocked once against the stone as she straightened. I heard it clearly in the quiet.

We walked out of the doorway separately, each going back the way we had come. The daylight held.

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