There's a clock on the wall. It's round and has a single arm with a sun on the end of it, which is presently just shy of the top of the circle. The sun in the sky appears to be in an approximately analogous position.

How admirably simple to read!

But how does it run, anyway? Is it making clockwork noises or electronic noises? Does it faintly glow and tingle with magic and raise the hairs on one's arms?

Clockwork noises!

And more elaborate clockwork than it appears at a glance.

There's only one arm going around, but the background of the circle is divided into thin pie-slice sections - ninety-six of them, to be exact, four for every hour of the day - of which approximately the top half are a pale sky blue, and approximately the bottom half are dark and speckled with stars. The little sun on the end of the arm seems like it can be flipped to show a little moon, which it will presumably do when it crosses the day/night border; and the sections surrounding the border are flippable too, able to display either a night side or a day side. So the clock shows not only the objective time in relation to noon and midnight, but also the current relationship between that time and the interval between sunrise and sunset.

Fancy. And thematic.

If he wanders out of the library —