Dream d3718-s: The Gap Held Open

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the first place was quieter than I expected. Two workers sat at a long table near the window, the kind worn smooth at the edges from years of elbows and stacked parcels. One had a sheet of figures before her; the other had a different sheet. They were not comparing them. They held them side by side and looked at both, and that was the whole of it.

Someone had sent word back. I understood this the way you understand things in dreams - not from a letter read aloud or a voice across the room, but from the way the workers held themselves: attentive but unhurried, as though the response had arrived and they were letting it sit in the room before doing anything else with it.

The figures did not match. I could see that from where I stood near the door. The worker on the left had a column that ran to a different total than the worker on the right. Neither moved to correct the other. One of them weighted a corner of her sheet with a small grey stone so it would not shift in the air from the open window. The other let hers rest loose, trusting the table.

A bag sat on the floor between the two chairs - the kind with worn leather buckles and a dark stain near the base that had been there long enough to be unremarkable. Nobody reached for it. The bag had brought the response in and now it was simply there, done with its part.

The window let in a flat grey day. No direct sun, just the ambient light of a sky that had been overcast since morning. On the sill, a cup held two short candles that had not been lit. There was no need for them yet, but someone had set them there against the hour when there would be.

I stood near the door and watched the workers keep the gap open between their two columns. This was the response: that the differences should remain visible, not resolved, not annotated, just held in place where both accounts could see them. One of the workers pressed her fingertip to a number on her page - not to mark it, only to anchor herself in the row - and then lifted her hand and was still.

The place held around them. The bag stayed closed.

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Artwork instructions

IMAGE PROMPT: pixel art a human worker framed by an open doorway in Kestrelfall, two accounts, working hands and a worn travelling bag, muted slate and ochre, soft daylight, 8-bit style