A man of perhaps middling height was standing on the edge of a volcano, looking into the smoking crater.
In his hands, he carried a book.
The book looked at once unimaginably old and yet still as new as the day it was bound--- it was merely the make and the materials that gave away the idea of its age. Hide, of an exquisite quality but nothing modern about its processing, was the binding, and the whole of it was sewn together rather than glued.