The cold woke Callum before the alarm did. It came through the gap in the window frame as a particular stillness, a dry contracted quality in the air that meant the temperature had dropped through the small hours and was still dropping. He lay on his back and listened. Nothing moved. The wind that had come up after dinner had gone sometime in the night, and the basin was absolutely quiet around the house. He sat up, swung his legs out, and put his feet on the bare wooden floor.
The floorboards were very cold. He found his socks in the dark and put them on and walked through to the kitchen. The light came on and made a yellow pool that showed him the frost on the window glass, the fine crystalline tracery of it across each pane, thick at the corners, thinner in the centres. He filled the kettle and set it on the element and stood with his back to the bench, waiting, looking at the frost. Through the cleared strip at the bottom of the pane he could make out the paddock fence posts, just their dark shapes, and above them nothing, only the dark sky still fully dark, the last hour before dawn. He heard the dogs shift in their kennels across the yard, the small metallic sound of a chain ring, and then quiet again.
He drank his tea standing at the bench, looking at the window. The frost at the bottom of each pane softened and cleared as the warmth reached it. He could see the paddock more clearly now, the frost on the grass making it pale, and above the fence the low bulk of the tussock block at the back of the station. The sky above it was still dark. He poured the last of the tea and drank it and rinsed the cup and set it on the rack.