A Magic Act

Author's note: This is a very short story I wrote for a creative writing class. There some ideas in it I'd like to expand on but for now, it's like the only piece of writing I've ever finished so I'd like to just savor the feeling of having completed something. I hope you enjoy!

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Erich leaned forward in his chair, the old wood complaining beneath him as he watched with unconcealed glee. The dimly lit backroom was neater than you'd expect from a sorcerer's lair. There were no cobwebs clinging to the edges of cast-iron cauldrons. No strange instruments made of silver or gleaming crystals hiding in the corners of the room. Papers were stacked neatly on a desk completely free of dust and a small set of books in languages Erich wasn't familiar with sat in a neat row on a shelf. They held knowledge about anatomy and basic engineering, only mysterious in the eyes of a simple tailor's assistant like Erich.

But still, Erich knew it wasn't the décor that made a sorcerer's lair. Plain though it was, the space had still absorbed some of the life force of its owner. Everything in the room seemed to be watching and listening with the quiet judgement of the magician currently wrestling with a strait jacket on the thread-bare carpet.

Catching the conjoined sleeves with his boot, Rayan managed to pull the thick canvas from over his head and fling it across the room.

"Did you see it that time?" Rayan gasped, catching his breath from the floor. He looked around the room for his shirt, having taken it off save it from getting crumpled up during the demonstration. "The trick is to take a deep breath to make your body as big as possible at the time of binding, then release it to make it easier to wriggle out. No magic involved."

"It's amazing." Erich sat back in the plain little chair, smiling up at the beautiful rug hanging above the desk on the other side of the tiny room. The design was similar to any of the rugs he'd seen under dining tables in any other house in the city, but the colors were much more vibrant. The reds were lively as cardinals in flight, the blues as deep as the night. "The things you'll say to mask your use of magic is absolutely amazing."

Rayan, having remembered where he put his folded shirt, held it in a ball over his face to muffle a frustrated scream.

"I don't know why you put all this effort into making me think you aren't a wizard. You know I won't tell anyone." Erich grinned foolishly, his cheeks ruddy with wine.

The chair beneath him groaned in harmony with the magician.

Erich was telling the truth. Though he spoke about his friend often and to anyone who would listen, he never voiced his thoughts about sorcery. Not that it would matter much if he did. No one would take to heart the ramblings of some son of an immigrant farmer about his favorite stage magician. Almost everyone assumed Rayan was mystical just from looking at him anyways. The dusky shade of his skin and the lilt of his well-trained speech spoke to people of carpets flying over moonlit sand dunes even as he spoke of politics or the latest discoveries in medicine.

Across the room, Rayan pulled on his shirt and mumbled something in Arabic at the mirror. From the tone, Erich could tell it was a series of curses. They were the mundane kind which one might be likely to spit at a table leg after stubbing a toe. Erich knew he wasn't the kind of wizard to cast curses. Well, Erich hoped he wasn't.

After three years of associating with the man, he was becoming quite familiar with curses and swears in all kinds of languages. In fact, the polyglot seemed to have different annoyances categorized by language. Erich wasn't sure what made forgetting things a specifically French pain in the ass while dealing with rude people was by nature Latin, but he was touched that his friend always expressed his frustration towards himself in Arabic, his native tongue.