Morning came the way it had come the previous two mornings.
The ambient light quality shifted through its cycle from the night-equivalent register back toward the day-equivalent, the self-luminous landscape around him moving through the transition without any single moment that could be called the moment of dawn. He had been awake through the transition. He had been awake through most of the night-equivalent period, the Middle Domain's effect on his physiology continuing to suppress the biological need for unconsciousness that Blue Star's long years had made habitual.
He was sitting when the light changed.
