(Author's POV)
A cloaked figure stands in a room like being carved of stone and silence. The location is a high tower, which, for the figure, feels like the top of the world.
The room is not large, but its height gives it a breathless, vaulted feel, as if standing inside a hollowed-out candle. The air is cool and smells of ancient paper, dried herbs, and the sharp, pungent scent of mixed concoctions that linger after a spell.
Everything leads to the centre, where a round table of flawless black marble rests. Like a pool of stillness, its surface is so smooth it appears liquidish. And upon it, cradled like a waiting world, rests a globe.
It is not a mapmaker's globe but rather is made of glass. Its surface swirls with slow, cumulonimbus clouds, charcoal grey, and the bruised purple of a twilight sky.
