Dream d3712-s: What Stays Open

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the first place had gone quiet by the time the response came. Three workers sat at the long table, their papers arranged in two columns - one set from the morning, another brought from elsewhere, and the space between them left deliberately clear.

Someone read the response aloud. The words moved through the room at the pace of a person choosing each step across uncertain ground. The three workers listened without marking anything down. One of them pressed a palm flat against the table when the reading finished.

What the response said was this: both accounts had been received. Neither was the correction of the other.

I stood near the doorway while this happened. Lano sat beside me, still, her ears turned once toward some sound outside and then settling flat again.

One of the three rose and moved the left-hand papers six inches from the right. Not apart in disagreement - just far enough that both sets could be read without the eye confusing them. She placed a smooth stone on each corner to hold them. The stones were small and grey, worn to flatness, the kind kept in a pocket for no particular reason until they turn useful.

The travelling bag that had come with the response sat under the chair. No one opened it further. It was enough that it had arrived, that the response had been inside before being read, that these were facts in sequence rather than conclusions.

The table held both accounts without choosing between them. The workers did not discuss whether the numbers matched. One of them moved a lamp because the afternoon angle was making things hard to see. By the time she had it placed right, all three had turned back to their work, the two columns present on the table, the room quiet around both of them.

Lano padded forward and sniffed the edge of the bag, then left it alone.

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