Bright morning comes; the bloody fingered dawn with zealous light sets seas of air ablaze and bends to earth another false beginning. My eyes open like cornflowers, stick, crusted with their own stale dew, then take that light.

I stand, then haul myself up to kneel at one of the tower's narrow windows, rubbing the sleep from my eyes and gazing out to witness the dawn.

Brandished and flagrant, the sunlight strikes this dun plain and makes of it a cauldron where rising vapours multiply and summit only to, in clearness, disappear, dissolved within an oceanic waste of sky.

I take in the view while expelling my own waste, as, going on a slow curve out, my personal contribution to the moat floats free, golden in the new day's haze and splashing, foaming on the dark waters below, each sunstruck, brassily delineated droplet a shining stitch within a rope of gold; a glowing sine like a metaphor for light.

Lightened, I return to my makeshift bed by the side of the cold, page clinkered grate; I intend only to rest, but fall asleep again, to be woken by the sounds of a key turning and a knock at the door.

,Sir?”

I sit up, disoriented with the hollowness arising from sleep needlessly resumed and then uncomfortably interrupted.

“Good morning, sir. I've brought some breakfast.” Old Arthur, wheezing from his journey up the narrow winding stair, squeezes through the door and deposits a tray upon a trunk. He looks apologetically at me. “May I sit, sir?”