Mary Thetis always loved the sunrise, the way the world became whole again at the touch of a distant star. On Caprica, she had awakened in the dark every morning, and would watch the sun slowly light the sky from her kitchen window. She would sip her coffee black, with no cream or sugar. She was never a breakfast person, and after her husband died, she never bothered with it.
On New Caprica, the coffee rations were meager, so she saved it for once every week. A little girl, one of her students at the makeshift school, gave her a gray-blue coffee mug. If Mary caught the sunrise at the exact right moment, she could lift the mug and match the shade of the sky just as the sun crested over the hills. Every morning she stood outside, mug in hand, whether she was drinking coffee or not.
The sunrise was the one thing she would miss from that Gods-forsaken planet. It was the reason she had voted to make Gaius Baltar President, the lifetime ago when such things mattered.
A vote for Baltar had been a vote for sunrises.