At the dry herb room behind the public infirmary, Meri Sarn keeps the opening docket file beside a shelf kept clear beneath the drip line from the upper stone seam. The two details are easy to miss in a summary: one is a line in a ledger, the other is the condition that decides whether the line is useful.
Meri Sarn is the keeper of the city’s dried-herb reserve. On this thaw season visit, the work begins with the reserve labels and the healers’ weekly issue notes; only after the entry is checked can the crew say what the rule asks of the people below.
55 bundles still within their marked use period were entered this cycle, compared with 55 in the prior file. The figure is one part of a longer handoff. Runa Ash checked the reserve labels and the healers’ weekly issue notes against the field notes. The method is to separate available stock from stock that can reach a patient in time; it confirms the entries, but not every interpretation attached to them.
The central store is dry but distant; the neighborhood cabinets are faster to reach but vary in temperature. The current record does not settle that disagreement. Residents closest to the work describe the difference as a route, a wait or a shift that cannot be moved on a slate. Their accounts have been attached to the docket rather than folded into the total.
A new complaint or proposal has been entered under a dated docket. The entry belongs to the opening docket file at the dry herb room behind the public infirmary. Two cabinets will be monitored through the next deep-winter cycle. The next visit will show whether the revision travels beyond the office that wrote it.
