Taz exhaled, slumping on the chair in his office.
It was the long, slightly weary exhale of someone who had been holding a breath they hadn't entirely been aware of, the kind that came not from physical exertion but from the sustained low-level tension of a morning that had refused to be simple.
He was a distinctive-looking man, and not in a way he had chosen.
The hair at the sides of his head was white — a clean, full white that caught the light without ambiguity — but the center of his scalp ran bald from front to back, a smooth strip that divided the white on either side with the straightforward confidence of someone who had long since made peace with the arrangement.
It gave him a look that was difficult to place in terms of age, authoritative in bearing but worn at the edges in the way that people who managed complicated things for long enough eventually became worn.
The office he was in was quite large, which made sense, since it was the academy's principal's office.
