Before the Day Lands

"There's a kind of thinking that only happens in the hours before anyone expects you to be awake."

The house was still wrapped in sleep when I stirred. Not from any sound — no alarm, no footfalls, no barking from Millie. Just that quiet click of awareness flicking on inside my chest, like a shift in the body's rhythm that had nothing to do with light or time. My eyes opened to darkness, the room visible only in vague shapes — the edge of the desk, the blind hanging still against the window.

5:46 a.m. I didn't even have to check the clock. My body had learned the rhythm of these mornings — Seminary mornings — though I hadn't needed to attend for years now. The habit stayed with me anyway, like a leftover echo.

I didn't move right away. The house was cold, and Millie was warm. Curled beside my legs, tucked into herself like punctuation. Her breathing was deep and even, her body rising and falling with a calm that was impossible not to synchronise to. I felt the tug to drift back down with her, let my mind fold into sleep again. But I didn't.

My arm ached.

It had woken me twice in the night — once around midnight, a sharp pulse that cut through whatever dream I'd been having, and again sometime after three. The ibuprofen had worn off by then, and the wound had made its presence known with the dull, insistent throb that Stephen had warned me about. I'd taken two more tablets in the dark, washing them down with stale water from the glass on my bedside table, and eventually the pain had softened enough to let me sleep again.

Now, in the faint glow from the streetlight, I could just make out the edge of the bandage peeking from beneath my sleeve. White gauze, slightly rumpled from the night's restless movements. I flexed my fingers experimentally, feeling the pull of damaged skin, the protest of muscles that hadn't yet forgiven me for yesterday.

Yesterday.

The word felt heavier than it should. Too small a container for everything it held.

I reached over with my good arm and opened the laptop. The screen glowed softly, casting pale light across the blankets and my chest, illuminating dust in the air. The brightness made my eyes ache for a moment before they adjusted. I'd left it on sleep mode overnight — some half-watched documentary about marsupial reintroduction programmes in Kakadu still open in a tab, paused mid-sentence. I'd put it on hoping it would quiet my mind, give me something neutral to focus on. It hadn't really worked.

I scrolled quietly. Read a little. Skimmed a few paragraphs. Not really searching for anything. Just... orienting. There was something about these early hours that made the world feel looser around the edges. Like time hadn't quite settled into itself yet. I liked that feeling. Needed it, maybe, after the past two days.

In one ear, I'd left an earbud from the night before — still playing soft piano I'd forgotten to pause. The other dangled, tangled in the sheets and wrapped once around Millie's back leg. She didn't seem to mind.

My room was a soft mess of half-attempted order, visible now in the laptop's glow. Sketch pads still open on the desk, a towel slung over the back of the chair. The air still smelled faintly of dog, eucalyptus, and dust. I didn't bother getting up. There was nowhere I needed to be until my late morning lecture.

I heard Mum in the kitchen. The faint hiss of the kettle. The soft clink of a mug being placed beside another. I pictured her — barefoot probably, cardigan pulled over her nightdress, moving through the kitchen like a ritual she didn't have to think about. The toast would be on. Charles's scriptures already laid out on the table. A Post-it note with a verse. Always handwritten, always underlined.

She didn't come into my room right away. I think she hovered there, just at the edge of the door — watching, maybe, the same way she used to when I was ten and pretending to be asleep. I could feel her presence before I saw her.

Eventually, the door creaked a little farther open. I didn't turn. Just kept scrolling, kept listening. She didn't say anything. Probably read the moment right: I was awake, but not ready for the day to land fully on me yet. And she knew if she spoke — really spoke — I might withdraw altogether. I wasn't trying to be difficult. It was just how I processed things. Quiet first. Thoughtful space.

Maybe she noticed the bandage. Maybe she'd heard me moving in the night. If she had questions, she didn't ask them. That was something I appreciated about Mum — she understood that sometimes the kindest thing you could do was give someone room to come to you in their own time.

Millie stirred beside me, stretching one paw outward in a long, graceful arc, then curling back up again with a low huff of dog contentment. Mum didn't speak, didn't linger. Just observed. Maybe for longer than she meant to.

I felt her leave. Heard the whisper of the door being nudged almost shut again, the way she always left it — never fully open, never fully closed.

I didn't go back to sleep. Didn't need to.

The documentary was still paused on screen, a frame of dense bushland frozen in time. Somewhere in that landscape, animals were waking up to another day of simply existing — foraging, resting, avoiding predators, doing the things their bodies were built to do without questioning whether any of it meant anything. I envied them that, sometimes. The clarity of instinct. The absence of the particular human burden of wondering whether you were living the right life, making the right choices, becoming the person you were supposed to become.

Margaret's words drifted back to me, unbidden. The ones who stay — they're a particular kind of person. Not better than the others, necessarily. Just... different.

I wasn't sure yet which kind I was. Wasn't sure if yesterday had brought me closer to an answer or further away.

Outside, the world was still dark. Dawn was more than an hour away. I glanced down toward Millie and whispered into the quiet, "Not yet, girl." She didn't respond — just pressed closer, her warmth seeping through the blankets into my side.

Whatever waited outside that door — scriptures, toast, expectations, the slow accumulation of another day — it could wait.

Just for a moment longer.