I could tell that it was early morning. The sunlight slipping in through the half-opened jalousies of my home office’s window had that soft, gauzy quality it takes on just after dawn on clear days. I did not, however, remember how or why I had come into the room, or even whether I had just risen from bed or had been up and about for some time. I realized after a moment that I was in my dressing gown; I was also carrying a large cup full of coffee, still very hot, though I could not recall having poured it; but I had no memory of having wakened from sleep. This was not a new experience for me, though. I suffer from a condition I vaguely call “oneirolepsy,” which causes my conscious mind occasionally to shift, without my noticing the transition, into a kind of lucid dreaming, and which is invariably bracketed by moments of disorientation when I am never quite certain whether I am emerging from or sinking into the revery. For several seconds, I could not decide which was the case just then. When, however, I took a sip of my coffee and immediately recognized it as a very rich Ethiopian Yirgacheffe, I concluded that I must be fully conscious, as my senses are never that acute when I am in one of my oneiric states. I took a second sip. Then I noticed Roland: he was lying on his side on the daybed in the corner of the room, seemingly fast asleep; he had somehow contrived to draw the dark red counterpane as well as a throw blanket over his back and eyes, and what was visible of his snout suggested a state of deep contentment. I smiled, as I always do on first catching sight of him in the morning, seated myself as quietly as I possibly could in my desk chair, and swiveled it around so that I could continue to look at him.
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