I woke before the household did.
This was not unusual for me — I have always been an early riser, though the reasons have changed over centuries. In older lives, it was necessity. The world before modern conveniences required early hours. In more recent lives, it became habit, and then something closer to preference: the particular quality of very early morning, before the day's demands have fully assembled themselves, is something I have learned to value across a great many iterations of waking up in a great many different rooms.
This morning, I woke because I had not truly slept.
I lay still for a while, listening to the sounds of the house in the dark — the distant call of a bird I did not recognize, the small settling movements of an old building, the wind in the plum tree outside. Then I rose, dressed in the quiet way I had learned to dress when a household was sleeping around me, and went to the study.
