Songs of the Wind
[A copy of Songs of the Wind by the wizard Elminster. This edition is not annotated at all, and old enough that it might be part of the originally printed set, or perhaps just a compelling reproduction. He recalls the magical school of Windsong Tower in the elven city of Myth Drannor. One section of recollections has this for an opening] There's a pergola that lecturers gather under at the wintertime ball. Someone gets a block of oakwood from the great bough of Windsong, and they all pose as the block fetcher sculpts the image into the wood using a transmutation spell. This little ritual is so bleakly funny I can barely recall it without feeling like I need to wash my mouth out with lime juice. Anyway the lecturers talk turkey, paying especial attention to the body language of the people around them, because these are not simply colleagues. They're also rivals in the strictest sense of the word. There is no such thing as a lecturer without their foot in the competitive stirrup. They're a jockeying lot, and the way they view the world outside their tenure and status is tantamount to the way they view students; something to be tolerated and molded in the warm clay of their fantastic brains. Projected. Then sculpted. Like images in oakwood. I would know. I was the one taking the picture.