Many abilities may refer to Scenes, this is the way the game breaks up how interesting times occur in a game.
A scene is one notable section of time and in-character role-play. A scene ends when there is some abstraction of going to another place to do something else or the end of a conversation. Every Combat is part of a single Scene, whether that starts and ends with the combat depends on the context.
Talking to a merchant may be a scene, breaking into their house may be another scene, and speaking to several members of the mages guild about what you found as well as exploring it may be another scene.