<span style="font-family: 'Georgia'">I saw it in her eyes, the tell-tale sparkle of one who had detected my aura brushing against them. I got all kinds of reactions to it, but nothing ever quite like hers. She was leaning in closer, her eyes devouring my features, huge, wide and dark, and she was breathing like she wanted more. There was a game my sorceress mother used to play with me daily, teasing back and forth with little brushes of contact and tiny wisps of illusion. It was a contest, to see how close we could get to the other before they noticed. I’d taken to the game with all the zeal of a child, for it was pure fun and my mother was a sorceress of exceeding skill, so it was always a unique challenge, not only to find ways to slip through her detective measures, but to detect her own advances and questing tendrils of magic. The winner got to choose the prize: a illusory zap, a startling figment of non-reality, an image or song you just couldn’t get out of your head, a tickling squiggle in the sides, or a suggestion that they would have to notice before they didn’t just go and do it. We were savage competitors, but never cruel, though I realized early on that we could be. If you got around someone’s mind like that, you could make them do anything, and you could make them like it. So, by those extended years of practice, I’d developed a fine hand with my aura, and could easily reach out and touch just about anyone, whether they were looking or not, and they’d never be the wiser.<br/>
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But she was definitely looking, and it looked like those minute questings had traced her skin like fingertips, so bright was the wonder in her eyes. Just as I could see that she felt me, I felt her focus her senses on me, and suddenly felt perfectly naked. Naked, but not exposed. Like she could piece me apart just with those eyes, and I got the distinct impression that she could read my scent profile like a book. I supposed that came from the fact that the closer I got the more she seemed to pick up on, and by all indications we both wanted to close that distance even more. Her eyes were open and clear on that point, and of a sudden I knew I’d be coming back to this place. Her expression darkened with a satisfied pleasure at my choice of wine, like the question had had a right answer, and I’d pegged it. Then it darkened further, and I knew I’d gotten my wish. Red rose up under her freckles and her lips parted, and the mischief I saw dancing in her eyes told tales of fiery passion and wild abandon. This one had a taste for magic, and I was of a mind to show her more.<br/>
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The laughter in my eyes echoed hers at her words, and I set the pencil and list down in agreement. “I never had any doubt of that.” She vanished behind a doorway with a finger pleading for a moment, then came back with a hand-crafted wooden case bearing the wolf’s head motif on the lid, and a dark delicacy inside. My attention was seized by a majestic mountain vista, a shining lake and a wreath of mist, fecund with life and teeming with pride. She lifted it and presented it to me like a newborn, cradling her hands around the bottle with a tender love and keeping it from me with a subtle guard that I was careful to respect. I lifted my eyes back to hers to listen to her speak, and she gave me a vivid image of the history of the wine, its proud background and its singular origin. She knelt down to retrieve a wine glass and a sample of her masterpiece, and I watched her pour it for me and place it in my hand. I brought it up to my chin, gave it a swirl, then pulled a draft of rich berry and savory woods, with a heavy clamor of sweetness untinged with bite or blur. It was… “Masterful.”<br/>
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I looked back down to the image on the bottle, and the scent of the wine sent my consciousness cascading over the lake in the daybreak of spring, with the chill mountain air and the richness of the earth wrapping the joy of the rain in small clusters of ebullient excitement, then I was wrapped in the simmering dark of the brooding fermentation, and the freedom of trials past. Taking in the woman before me the profile shifted to include hours of hot, sweaty labor and month after month of patience, culminating finally in proud achievement after many passes of trial and error. It was perfection in a glass. She had captured the spirit of her home, and brought it to the city to share. No wonder this place was so bustling, she and her vintners’ genius were a monument to their craft.<br/>
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I lowered the glass without touching it to my lips, then met her eyes once more. “This is perfect, but I have one small change to the order. I would like two of these, one to take with me and give away, and another to enjoy more appropriately.” I gave the glass another swirl, then lifted it just enough that when I gently blew over it the magically conjured scents of the land and season in which the fruit was picked gathered in the glass, then flew out as if carried by a spring breeze in the middle of a California summer toward the woman watching my every move. Along with the gift of home I reached out with the same aura she’d recognized and gave her the sensation of the backs of my fingers gliding through the field of freckles on her cheek. “If I come back around closing time do you think you could help me with that?”</span>