The kitchen light and the washing-up water condensing on the glass hid the dark garden until I switched it off to let the morning glow in, reflected off the translucence of water crystals.
After I closed the front gate I observed the world a moment. Mist hung between the houses, obscuring the view just beyond the end of the close. Each little Christmas light held a halo of vapour in the front gardens.
The car door pulled back slightly as I opened it; ice sticky. The glass looked wet, but a fingertip test revealed cold, texture; water frozen in the moment of running and dripping to a glassy model of itself.
After scraping the outside I sat, engine running, waiting until I could read the number-plate on my neighbour's car through the screen's internal fog.
After five miles I felt some warmth on my feet from the heater; the thermostat must have opened just before. The sky developed a glow where the sun was rising, faint pink, smeared yellow.
As far again and the sun was visible, but still seen through a haze. Misted fields and hedgerows backlit by this spectral star were visible as snapshots between periods of attentiveness to the road ahead; a sequence of Turneresque stills.
Rising up further beyond the river valleys and their fogs, the sun, itself risen, began to cut, to outline and to shadow.
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