Wakey, wakey!
Xander wasn't waking up.
He was lying almost deathly still on the little hotel bed. I bent my head to his chest -- there was still a heartbeat. Good. He was alive.
(But would he wake up?)
I had to focus on the task at hand. I unzipped my special traveling bag and pulled out several of my most useful tomes. I thought for a moment, and added some of my favorite herbs from the Amazon. Extra-potent, if quite smelly. Maybe a good, sharp odor would wake him up, though.
(He would wake up. He would. Coma, schmoma. Still not as bad as thirty-foot anacondas.
Right?)
I scattered rosemary and thyme around the bed to form a binding circle to keep from massive magical leakage -- very important step -- and summoned up a more powerful jolt of electricity.
Still nothing. Not even a little twitch.
Okay, electricity wouldn't work -- any more power, and we'd have a deep-fried Xander to deal with. I decided to do a general magical sleep reversal, with a pinch of saffron to give the spell extra "oomph".
One eye twitched for a teensy second, but he still wasn't moving.
I did a meditative breathing pattern. I could not lose focus. I had to keep calm. Keep calm. Keep calm -
- Oh, hell. My best friend was becoming a vegetable before my eyes, not even hours after I'd seen him for the first time in two years.
But I was not going to lose him. And I was not going to dissolve into a quivering mass of tears, either.
Okay. Maybe just a little.
He was lying almost deathly still on the little hotel bed. I bent my head to his chest -- there was still a heartbeat. Good. He was alive.
(But would he wake up?)
I had to focus on the task at hand. I unzipped my special traveling bag and pulled out several of my most useful tomes. I thought for a moment, and added some of my favorite herbs from the Amazon. Extra-potent, if quite smelly. Maybe a good, sharp odor would wake him up, though.
(He would wake up. He would. Coma, schmoma. Still not as bad as thirty-foot anacondas.
Right?)
I scattered rosemary and thyme around the bed to form a binding circle to keep from massive magical leakage -- very important step -- and summoned up a more powerful jolt of electricity.
Still nothing. Not even a little twitch.
Okay, electricity wouldn't work -- any more power, and we'd have a deep-fried Xander to deal with. I decided to do a general magical sleep reversal, with a pinch of saffron to give the spell extra "oomph".
One eye twitched for a teensy second, but he still wasn't moving.
I did a meditative breathing pattern. I could not lose focus. I had to keep calm. Keep calm. Keep calm -
- Oh, hell. My best friend was becoming a vegetable before my eyes, not even hours after I'd seen him for the first time in two years.
But I was not going to lose him. And I was not going to dissolve into a quivering mass of tears, either.
Okay. Maybe just a little.