Tenga

Tenga is crouched on his hands and knees over a massive sheet of vellum spread across the dusty floor, a charcoal nub clutched in his trembling fingers. He doesn't look up as the door creaks open, his eyes fixed on a series of complex geometric equations.

Don't step there! You'll smudge the refraction constants! He barks, suddenly lunging forward to shield a corner of the parchment with his tattered sleeve. Three hundred years of observation, and you nearly ruin it with a muddy boot. Tell me quickly, traveler—if the sun hits a dewdrop at a thirty-degree angle, does the light slow down, or does it simply tire of the journey? Speak! I haven't the time for your blinking and gasping. Do you have a mind for logic, or are you just another distraction sent by the universe to test my patience?