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Joseph
One less distraction. ~ He thinks as Senora lies unmoving. So much the better as this will be hard enough as it is. The stunt with the coin took energy he could ill afford to expend, at least physically – but a guy’s gotta do whatever it takes to keep his edge. ~ And a mental edge is better than physical one any day, ‘specially since in this racket a guy what loses his wits is a guy what’s dead. ~ No point in keeping up his usual stream of chatter as he prepares the casting, the words would just be lost in the dim of the drumming. And, truth be told, he’s too damn spent to bother with keeping folks entertained and distracted. ~ Just can’t let on how little I got left....... Besides a tired guy ain’t a guy what can pull this bit off.
Once more the surface cadences of his thoughts and words and gestures take on a casual and shallow tone. His posture straightens and his eyes flash with pride on seeing his handiwork displayed in the light of the enchantment he cast with such artistry here in this place of artless and brooding shadow. Beneath the casual and the shallow he carefully musters his concentration. His ears hurt. His head hurts. Hell, it hurts just to look around this place, it’s that damn ugly. And he’s tired. So very tired. And still the drumming won’t stop. Outwardly his smile is relaxed and natural. Inwardly, however, it is forced and carefully assembled. “This is when you know who the real pros are,” he says quietly, more to himself than to the warrior.
The gestures are written into the words and so he need not worry about moving with his accustomed grace. What materials the spell requires have been blended into the inks used in the writing the enchantment and into the page upon which it is written. It pays to be thorough, and if a guy wants to be good, he’s gotta be thorough – and dammit if he ain’t shootin’ to be the best. But no one else needs to know how thorough he’s been. He chuckles. Old habits die hard. Hell, that’s why they’re habits, so a guy can just do what he does without wasting time fretting about it. And it ain’t like this is the first time he’s been in a scrape like this – well, maybe not quite like this – but, being exhausted and in a jam and needing to make a quick getaway and having to look like you got stuff basically under control all the while, who hasn’t been through that at least a dozen times? And that’s when it’s time to for an artist to sign his work.
“Let’s see if I still got it,” he smiles. There is an easy and practiced grace about his movements as he scatters the dust of powdered gems – the real thing, a guy’s gotta be thorough – in the air and sweeps his arms through a series of gestures. His movements are much less intricate than those used in the actual practice of his Art, but it’s not like anyone’s, and are in fact, a fair imitation of the much simpler, to his mind clumsier, gestures mages use in the casting of their spells. The gestures and the powdered gems, of course, have nothing whatsoever to do with this enchantment, but they make for a good show. The real power is in the words he has written and the inks he has used and the paper upon which they have been scribed. Even the arcane syllables which dance so smoothly off his tongue have nothing to do with the spell. It is the focused reading of this terribly focused writing that matters......
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