I actually wrote all my words in one go today! That doesn’t always happen; sometimes I skip around in scenes as the whim takes me. Today I guess it was all about Blake and Ai’Teli again, I guess.
Word Count: 2123
Excerpt:
Blake had opted for robes as his primary mage’s garb. A standard, for certain, he’d always opted for the classic look. Ai’Teli had always teased him for taking the easy way out. Blake usually countered that their choice, a wraparound skirt in bright colors with a shawl over their shoulders, came directly from the traditions on the islands they called home. They had taken their own easy way out. It always earned a laugh in their warm, firm voice.
Blake could swear he heard that laugh, like a distant echo, as he glanced past the garments hanging in the armoire for the shelves down at waist level instead. That was where his and Ai’Teli’s magical foci rested, waiting for when they’d be needed.
Blake took his wand first, a straight length of beech with one small offshoot near the end making it look like a Y. He also kept a pendant with a simple river stone wrapped up in wires, and a half glove made of miniscule chainmail. He tossed the foci onto his box of personal effects.
Before he closed the armoire, his gaze alighted on Ai’Teli’s side of the shelf.
Their foci were only two. A tuning fork and a takakata. The takakata was a length of string, only a few inches long, connected at both ends to a pair of small, dark brown gourds filled with sand and sealed off. It was an instrument used often on their home island, they’d always said. Even before the two of them had begun their work using a magical focus to make their spellcasting more efficient, they’d often shown Blake how the instrument worked: holding one of the small gourds in their hand while swinging the other around it back and forth. The sharp clacks combined with the rustling of the sand created a rhythmic sound that evoked motion. It was the perfect focus for the energetic Ai’Teli Norua.
Writerly Things 