At Paulsen & Associates, Booksellers
The evening is quiet; the shop is advertised as 'closed,' as usual, but even for the inhabitants there is a closed-off quality to the place. Their tomb-colonist employee has gone to his lodgings, Charybdis is napping on the sales counter, and the reading-parlour where the plant grows is softly lit with the glow of foxfire candles. Henrik is ensconced in an armchair in that ring of light, his long legs thrown over the arm and his eyes trained upon a notebook in his lap. He is employed in designing a pulley system that might loft the Crimson Ring's furnishings to the ceiling, but this necessitates other considerations, as well: how to affix the cushions of chairs to the frames; how to minimize the number of holes one might drill in Scarlet's ceiling; and, most significantly of all, why in God's name Narciso ever thought this was a good idea.