To have a nose for magic is a rare thing. Few people can perceive the crossing of that threshold between what seems impossible and what should be. On one side there's a brilliant idea, an addition to the palace of knowledge and beauty: on the other an earthquake that leaves a new architecture behind. Even fewer can see something that's downstream of magic, a reflection of a reflection, and then follow a silent murmur to its source.

To have a nose for magic is to live in the minute after the storm's last thunder. Everything is an echo of magic yet magic is almost nowhere.

To have a nose for magic is to be able to track it down to where it was. To where it still is, sometimes. While the outcome of creation is still undecided and the act can still fail. That's where creation can be controlled — barely — or killed with frightening ease. The small group of people at the impossible moment and place. The unremarkable experiment that changes the world. A single act of creation. The infinitesimal origin of the exponential choice.

Neither good nor bad in itself. For whom? is the question. Power seldom suffers anything not under their control, and creation is the least controllable of forces. There's always somebody willing to pay a hunter. And every hunter needs a guide.

To have a nose for magic is a very profitable thing if you can survive your guilt. You have to warm your hands on a world of dying embers and try very hard not to picture it ablaze