It never failed, not in the last 15 years to wake him, the same hour, the same birdsong. Roused by flickering, golden fingers streaming into his insides, the man groaned and pushed his blackened-brown, curling hair from out of his face.
Really, he could never get away from it, no drink was strong enough, no night was distracted enough, and no amount of handsewn pillows and drapes were going to keep those merry stabs of pure light from rousing him.
So Vayne accepted it.
He had even developed a special concoction to rectify any possible uglier than normal moods left over from the ticking hours before.
One part ground bark from a very specific type of tangled root tree from Mt. Bur-Omisace, one part whatever was lightly alcoholic enough yet strong enough to make someone jump with spice and crystalline flavor, and the final third part was a simple, rich, clotted cream. Oddly enough, this last ingredient had always given Vayne pause when adding it to the dark mix, watching it swallow the blackness and emerge in whites, golden browns and absent minded streaks of lingering red tones.
Stirring the mix slowly today with a silver turtleshell spoon from Bhujerban merchants, free fingers absently pick at a silver signet ring he'd unsurprisingly forgotten to remove before he pauses before one of the great windows of his room, drawing back just a corner to allow bleary, stormy grey-blues some idea of the life outside. Always bright baubles, always a hairline crack in the frame of the windowsill that, somewhere along the way, seemed to continue out into the stone and mortar that held the ancestral home together. A reassurance of the way things were, and would be, really.
A soft clatter of meeting objects and Vayne brings the concoction to his lips, grunting idly as it predictably burns the tip of his tongue.
He chews on its end before pushing cool air over it with pursed, drying lips, eyes caught staring at patterns that his mind latches onto. "Landisian bovines – tree trunks for legs, and covered in tangled mossheaps of wool. Built to withstand besieging packs of wild white wolves and the occasional baritine, they are quaint, peaceful animals with a peculiar intellect." The absent gaze retracts and he lifts the curtain again to watch the dust cling to the golden fingers coming through the glass. "Slow to rouse and with a penchant for stubborn loyalty, indeed, they are ill befitting of old Landis."
The pale hand adjusts and the stony lip is brought to his own, delicate waves of heat pressing against chilled cheeks. "Oft have Hume teased and received their spiraling horns..." A brief, flickering smile. "How fortunate to espy one making a din now..."
The handwoven cloth is dropped, and the light clips out, but the room continues to glow as he cradles the drink in his hands, eyes flickering shut.
It would be a pleasant day after all.