As now nicknamed by her daughter, the Spymistress' office was the keep of secrets.
Upon approach, the door was almost always left ajar. The gap allowed for a thin wedge of candle light to peak through into the corridor, concealing the rest of the room mainly from view.
A gold plaque glinted across the door's front, definitively reading the words, 'Ashaia, Spymistress.' Curiously so, below the plaque, a drawing was pinned at three of four corners, allowing for one to droop slightly due to the little support. Decorated in a child's scrawl was that of a darkly dressed woman, with a billowing cloak that rippled upwardly like two vast wings. In the bottom left hand corner, twas signed simply as 'Ava'.
The feature of the office was certainly the desk that was situated in the center of the square room. As expected, the table was large and sturdy. Carved from oak and decorated with symbolic patterns wrapped around each leg. The entirety of it's surface was concealed by that of an enormous map of Eriador, littered in scribbles, ringed tea stains and the occasional tear from more frustrating evenings.
A purple incense stick lays in a wooden dish, once burned, and now smoking on the desk. It released a heavily perfumed scent of lavender and clary sage, the smoke curling outwardly in a somewhat ghostly manner. Beside it, a cup of sweetened tea, resting on a crockery saucer, had long gone cold whilst an empty milk bottle stood by, with a singular white rose sprouting from it's top. It was beginning to wilt and a lonely petal had already fell away - a sign that it needed to be replaced in the coming days. A bent quill tucked inside an inkwell, an array of loose red ribbon wrapped around a hairbrush, a small pot of rouge and a jeweled hand-mirror, a selection of patterned throwing knives lined perfectly in a row - the desk was certainly cluttered.
The entirety of the office was littered in candles of cream and purple colours, melted down to waxy stubs with several on the window sill having dripped entirely down the wall. They flicker ominously, bathing the office in a warm, swarthy glow that simply added to the connotation, 'a keeper of secrets'. The room held an air of mystery, imitating not only her role, but the woman behind that title.
Along with the population of candles came stacks upon stacks of documents, of all heights and density. Some were ordered into leather-bound folders, others were folded into wax-sealed envelopes and the rest remained hazardous, once tossed about the room and gracefully floated down to a final resting place.
Several oil paintings, on slightly askew brackets, huddled in one corner of the office, depicting scenes of distant, foreign lands. They were almost abstract, hard to decipher in such a low-light anyway. The back wall behind where she would sit acted mainly as the feature, adorned in decorative, floor to ceiling tapestries that corresponded with the plush, purple aesthetic of the office. They served little purpose than to look visually appealing to the eye.
Shelves aligned the other walls, housing hand-held contraptions of sorts that whirred or ticked with some level of annoyance for when the day would grow into the eve and all would fall quiet. Draped from a hook was the shadow of a darkened cloak, looking moreso like a passive wraith than an item of clothing. It was a velvety black, like most of the Spymistress' wardrobe, accented with an indigo trim and a hood with a point so long that it almost reached the bottom hem of the cloak itself. A plague doctor's mask was perched beside it, given it's own stand to be set upon. Black leather and metal bolts aligning it's beak, the rounded eyes to the mask copied with the same fashion in decorative rings and darkened glass to obscure the vision when peered through.
The overall ambience of the room honed some degree of luxury often considered unusual in a Breeish setting. It was both messy yet also taken care of, lived in and well settled. A calming atmosphere where one was able to simply be still and ponder, or pace and deeply consider. A shabby rug covered most of the floorboards in the room, it's material having been plucked messily from it's original weaving thanks to the only other soul who vacated the office. A tabby cat, hair long and specifically tended. When not sleeping on the plush cushion beneath the window, it would roam the room with a certain level of hubris, it's pink nose upturned haughtily.
This was Keys, the resident cat that served a single purpose of simply making the place more homely, and serenely weaving herself in and out between the legs of visitors. Often assumed as the Spymistress' pet, Keys was merely her own self. She took little notice of rules or direction, and lazed about or licked her paws as she deemed fit.
In many ways, she reflected the Spymistress, for both were easily dismissive of being told what to do whilst looking appropriately well-groomed.
