Magician
I used to have the biggest crush on Criss Angel.
Oh, God. Not this again. Cora. These people don't want to hear about your skinny-boi fetish.
It's not a skinny-boi fetish. He's got wicked skill. The body control it takes to do that levitation, especially when he's on the street—
Yes, fine. He's got skill. He's also got the personality of a potato.
You say that about all the goths.
Find me a goth who's more personable than a spud, and I'll dance the calypso with them. Until then...
... Anyway. It was Charlie who got us into magic.
One of those beginning magic kits that teaches you cup-and-ball tricks, flowers-in-the-wand, ours had a selection of sponge balls, silk scarves, and even a magic drawer trick.
The more we learned about how everything worked—
—The hungrier we were to practice the things we were learning.
Every decision we made came back to one basic question: will this help us do magic? Dance lessons, tumbling and gymnastics, theater — acting and stage crew — singing.
Math, drafting, engineering, physics. Speech, debate, psychology, sociology.
Hell, we once designed a trick based on an idea I came up with while folding cranes in an origami class.
Charlie wanted to call it 'the Human Haiku.' He was so dumb.
So dumb! Anyway. We were about five and the magic kit was a present for Charlie's ninth birthday—
Tenth. It was his tenth birthday. I remember being in the cart with Mom at the grocery store when she bought the candle for his cake. She was going to get a 1 and a 0 and the lady behind the counter showed her that there was a 10 for the same price as one candle instead of buying two.
... ... ... Tenth birthday, then. Point is we were very young when we started and it's pretty much the only thing we've ever done.
But that 'pretty much' does cover a lot of ground.
Well... That is what happens when you travel with a carnival: you cover a lot of ground.
I can't believe I haven't strangled you in your sleep.
The Worldbuilder's Note
"Magician" is the umbrella term covering all the niche "magic acts" such as stage illusionists, manipulators, escape artists, mentalists, etc. Any performer who creates the experience of impossibility through method, misdirection, technique, mechanism, psychology, or theatrical framing.
I've always been fascinated by the skilled craft and artistry of performance magic. Even when I know how a trick is done, well-executed showmanship will carry me through with wonder and awe, and only well after the performance will I remember, 'oh, yeah, that was a show.'
Working with stage magic also give me an iron-clad reason to not show things. Just like Adelaide Parallax's identity is a trick of perspective, so is the identity of the Black Box. Is what happened an illusion, or is it real?
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