Having to stay at home non-stop during the pandemic has produced the strange long-term effect that I’ve slowly devolved into a cat butler whose only functions in life are to let our two cats outside, back inside, dry said cats with a fluffy towel when they get wet, and listen to them complain about other cats daring to enter their territory (which isn’t actually their territory at all – it’s our neighbour’s back yard and one of the “invaders” is her cat whose lived there his whole life).
In addition, my every writing session starts with ten minutes of waiting for one of the cats to stop staring at the screen (judging me, of course) and finally settle down to a nap, because of course they couldn’t just let me write by myself. I’d screw everything up.
My wife is beginning to worry that my subservience to feline demands is becoming a tad excessive.
Les vieux maîtres de sort aiment raconter que la magie a un goût. Les sorts de braise ressemblent à une épice qui vous brûle le bout de la langue. La magie du souf e est subtile, presque rafraîchissante, un peu comme si vous teniez une feuille de menthe entre vos lèvres. Le sable, la soie, le sang, le fer… cha- cune de ces magies a son parfum. Un véritable adepte, autre- ment dit un mage capable de jeter un sort même à l’extérieur d’une oasis, les connaît tous.
'I totally saw this coming,’ Reichis growled, leaping onto my shoulder as lightning scorched the sand barely ten feet from us. The squirrel cat’s claws pierced my sweat-soaked shirt and dug into my skin.
The way of the Argosi is the way of water. Water never seeks to block another’s path, nor does it permit impediments to its own. It moves freely, slipping past those who would capture it, taking nothing that belongs to others. To forget this is to stray from the path, for despite the rumours one sometimes hears, an Argosi never, ever steals.