Stephen is watching so intently that he actually forgets to respond. Belatedly, realising that Julius has finished talking, he finally says, “It does.”

Their mutual interest in the theoretical underpinnings is part of what makes their approaches so compatible. As eager as Stephen is to get to the action, he also always wants to understand how and why things tick the way they do; he wants to see the building blocks beneath it all. Negative space. Pieces of a whole. An act of translation. Stephen’s horrid at languages (Petrana de Cedoux he is not), but he remembers patterns, shapes, a photographic memory searing them into vivid recollection: it had helped him when he was first learning magic.

He holds the pieces in his mind’s eye, his gaze faraway and looking inward to his memory. The trick, too, is to draw it in seamless motion without faltering. He takes another stab at it, starting to reproduce what Julius had drawn.

“I used to think that I had an unfair disadvantage,” he talks while he works, “because, y’know, the hand tremors. How the hell was I supposed to draw these complex infinitesimal runes when I can’t even sign my own name. But then I saw a man without an arm cast them perfectly, so I learned it’s about intent—”

The colours spark, coalescing, branding into the ground.