December 20th, 1895 -- just after midnight, Professor Crowley's room

It knocked on the door and when it swung open, two women faced each other on the threshold. One wore a nightgown, white, and a candle in her hand that burned bright and illuminated their faces in the dark doorway. "Come in, Professor Lyra," that one said and stalked ahead with the flickering light, which shone around the edges of her bone-blonde hair that fell long down her back. They passed the classroom through a fog and descended to the rooms behind and below, where the marble receded and got taken over by carpets and rugs and fabrics and drapes, where all hard and smooth surfaces vanished under woven layers of saturated and deep colors like bleeding gemstones of the earth, where barely-there silks moved under the ceiling; and between all hung and stood and nestled a myriad of strange things and shapes, bizarrely strung together, like a mythical bird carried them in through the toplight.

Professor Crowley looked around her realm and placed the candle on a tower of books half her person high. She sank down on the rug in front of her bed, which was of confusing opulence and contained on its vast stretch of blankets and pillows many scrolls and books and curios and a few large pieces of a shattered mirror. "Make yourself comfortable," Crowley said absentmindedly to her guest and pulled over a stack of oriental floor cushions.

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