The Streets and Connecting Alleyways

Badger giggled. "Well I guess that's where we start." he said, more to himself than anyone else.

"C'vektur," Badger's ignorant tongue doing a relatively good job of pronouncing the centaur's name, "Maybe the most important thing we have to do is make person feel comfortable. You play beautifully, but it doesn't matter one lick to us if the people watching don't feel comfortable enough to come up and drop a few coins in the hat." He paused for a moment. "When we're performing we put a hat or bowl or case or some such thing on the ground for people to drop money into." For some reason it seemed necessary to have a momentary digression into the very basics.

"Anyway we need the people watching to feel comfortable. They need to want to come up to us, it has to feel natural. A pleasant smile goes a long way if you happen to meet eyes with the people looking on.. Or maybe at a minimum don't stare back at them like they're the first whatever-they-are you've ever seen." The gnome smiled, obviously picking at his new comrade just a bit with that last line.

"Just like anything else, it'll take practice to learn how to do well." he said, his smile still on his face.

Badger continued to juggle the flaming torches smoothly and easily as C'vektur played her bouncing tune behind him.

"But I digress. As I said before my job is to make it only appear as if I am doing something dangerous! The fire is pretty but it makes it almost no different than juggling the regular unlit torches."

The gnome caught a torch with his right hand and passed it behind his back by flicking it low at his waist. The torch would make one neat spin behind Badger before he caught it with his other hand above his left shoulder.

He never stopped talking, performing or not.

"I did, however, promise you good people the worst accident possible when juggling fire, so I am going to deliver just that! I'm going to do what you're all hoping I'll do and catch the torches on the wrong end! - That is to say, the end that's on fire."

Badger quickly reestablished the easy 'normal' throw pattern.

"Pay close attention, because I'm going to have this accident right ...  Now!"

On his own cue, Badger made each torch in turn only flip half a rotation, and caught each one on the flaming balls of tightly woven fabric. He tossed them a bit higher, and sped up his pattern considerably as not to have to hold each torch long enough to damage his hands.

Just for this moment, Badger would shut up long enough to allow a few people to applaud. After a few long, admittedly uncomfortable moments (at least for Badger) of quite literally juggling fire, Badger would do the same half-rotation again and continue juggling the torches normally.

"Thank you, you're far too kind." he said in response to the applause.

Badger would finish his little act by one at a time holding the torches high above his head, and bring them down carefully into his mouth; the flames snuffed out one at a time due to the lack of oxygen in his mouth. With all of the flames extinguished, Badger bowed, holding all three of the torches in one hand and taking his hat off with the other.

"My associate and I certainly appreciate you all taking time to watch our little act, and would like to thank you for attentiveness! On behalf of my accompaniment and myself I do remind you that I have a rather expensive cooling salve habit to feed, so any coins to that end are certainly appreciated!"

A few people would laugh at Badger's joke, and he held his hat out to those that approached to drop money into his hat. Badger would chat with them, thanking them and joking as more coins found their way into his upturned headwear.