Somewhere in a dark, underground library, in the heart of Sweden, alone besides the book keeper, sat a man and a doll.
They sat a chair apart from each other on the same side of a plainly built table, pushed nearly to the book heavy shelves behind it and situated haphazardly across two rows. The man has light tan hair that shines in the all most romantic light of the candles, styled like a young girl who keeps her hair short, the mousy color matching his eyes.
His eyes are lovely, the color of them fitting in with his pale skin, lily white from always being sent to places such as this, the sharpness of their shape offset by the softer curves of his face, all brought to attention by the falling of the light and the tantalizing glare of it upon his half-moon glasses. He looks as though he should be the one behind the book keepers' desk and that he would be happy there and pleased to accept the offer, thank-you very much.
He is always in uniform, the stately black and white and neat fit making him seem even more professional and unapproachable unless you have a book to check out or need something from the archives. Or a bored Duke who wants to test him by sending him on another wild goose chase.
There is a rather depressingly large pile of books stacked on the table near his elbow, ones that he had already read piled almost twice as high on the floor on his other side, like a half built wall to ward off any that may yet interrupt his work. There is a book open in front of him, just above the notebook filled with words that, even in his exhaustion, resembles a row of highly trained ants crawling in perfect rows across the snow of the pages.
There is also a coffee pot on a portable burner with a candle underneath, running dangerously low on the man's liquid equivalent of a good rest and a decent meal. His gloved hand trembles softly around the mug he holds as he writes, only relinquishing his hold on it to refill it or to adjust his glasses and sigh, a rare expression of the constant stress and pressure.
"Coffee?" He asks the equally silent figure on the same side as him, a book open in front of her.
The doll in the pink dress shook her head politely, the rattling of the joints a staccato like a broken clock against the solid metronome.