Professor Junia Falk is a narrow-shouldered human woman with the weathered hands of a field archaeologist and the severe posture of a court tutor. Her skin carries a warm umber tone dusted with pale freckles across the nose, while old silver scars curl from her left temple to the corner of her mouth like tiny lightning forks. She moves with precise, economical steps, but when excited she circles her listener as if arranging an invisible diagram in the air. Her presence smells faintly of chalk, rain-soaked wool, and hot copper. The unexpected contradiction is her smile, which is broad, crooked, and almost mischievously youthful, utterly at odds with her grave academic manner and disaster-scarred face.