The confusing North Sea fog of battle still enveloped Edinburgh yesterday morning, as bleary politicos and journos struggled to see their way through the new politics of the new Britain.
After a campaign short on dramatic tension, one bit of political theatre was scheduled for staging at Edinburgh airport as the king-making leader of the centrist Liberal Democrats flew in from his Orkney island base. But perhaps as a symbol of the confusion and detours to come in the new era, that Firth of Forth fog - or haar, as it is known locally - meant that Mr Jim Wallace's flight was diverted to sunny Glasgow.
Mr Wallace is usually a picture of cheeriness, but was by midday drained by turbo-prop lag and a lack of sleep, having watched the results coming in all night. Crammed into one of the overheated, tiny media rooms in which this historic Scottish election campaign has been fought, he came close to falling asleep in front of the TV cameras, while being introduced by the party's elder statesman, Lord David Steel.
His lordship, a former Liberal leader who himself made a pact with a Labour government 23 years ago, was in a state of agitated frustration. His own place in the new legislature remained on a farcical knife-edge, after the staff counting ballot papers in Edinburgh had walked out just before 7 a.m., complaining of tiredness. By mid-afternoon, he was relieved to have a seat, with hopes of being the parliament's first Speaker.
But the tone of the new administration was perhaps better signified by the lack of triumphalism with which Mr Donald Dewar, the Labour leader, entered the capital city. His minders had booked a room for a press conference in the splendid Caledonian Hotel, and while the world's media waited for an air-punching entry, Mr Dewar sneaked in by a back entrance.
The mildly eccentric 61-yearold Glaswegian made a few comments and departed without taking questions - which made one wonder if this was really a winner. The first minister of the first Scottish parliament for nearly 300 years is uncomfortable with the theatre of politics, and with the father of the nation mantle which looks set to descend on his angular frame.
His appearance at party headquarters in the middle of the night was marked by an unusually thespian wiping of the brow, as this Prime Minister of Understatement described the biggest of his party's constituency successes as - how can I put it? - deeply satisfying. Being given to chronic gloominess and caution - to an almost comical extent - Mr Dewar was screwing up his face at the prospect of inventing the rules for the first coalition government Britain has seen since Churchill's in 1945.
Perhaps also he realised that the generation during which Labour dominated Scottish politics had just ended. While it was still able to rack up 53 out of 73 constituencies, the government's willingness to experiment with proportional representation denied the party a majority, as a convoluted calculation of second votes was returning 56 new Members of the Scottish Parliament, only three of which were Labour.
The Conservatives, wiped out at the polls two years ago after 18 years in power, had to rely on these top-up lists to get a foothold back in Scottish politics, with 18 seats. They failed to win a single constituency, yet continued to argue that they dislike the voting system on which they now rely.
And in the new Alice in Wonderland politics, the Liberal Democrats, who have long argued for proportional representation, found it worked against them - though stopped just short of saying they wanted to return to the old ways.
That left Alex Salmond, the super-cool leader of the Scottish National Party, returning from his fishing and farming fiefdom north of Aberdeen, armed with the sound-bites to claim that he was the real victor. His vote was up 7 per cent to 29 per cent, while Labour's was down by as much to 39 per cent.
What he seemed not to notice is that, after years of campaigning for the new parliament, the percentages do not matter any more. There are now real legislators elected, with MSP after their names, and 40 per cent of them women. Clasping their electronic voting cards when they convene next Wednesday for the first time, what has emerged as the sun broke through the Edinburgh fog is something the city has not seen for three centuries: power.