Eris bent over the dark wooden table, her hair falling in her eyes – a remainder that she needed a trim. Every time her elbow came to rest on the wooden surface, the table creaked perilously. Her hand trembled a little as it hovered over the blank yellowish paper. Annoyed with herself, she put down the quill and flexed her fingers. Just let the ink make contact with the paper. The pen will guide your hand from there. Picking up the quill again she made the first mark, slowly tracing the elegant shape of the J onto the paper. Taking a deep breath, she finished the –onas in a few seconds, hoping that the more natural the signature felt, the more natural it would look. A few more seconds and the surname of the man was on the paper.
She inspected the original signature on the old ledger and her crude copy. There wasn’t enough ink on her quill and the double Ls had come out scratchy and thin. The entire signature was slanted and the a at the end seemed disconnected from the rest of the name. Eris sighed, her nostrils flaring. This was not how she had wanted to start her first lesson. Then again, it could have been worse. Looking over the original ledger, she smirked, wondering if Jonas Marella knew how useful he was being. She was once paid a round sum to steal a packet of the man’s documents. It later turned out that half of the papers weren’t useful to her employer, so she saved them for just this purpose. She’d been planning to practice forgery for quite a while now and this cool, spring night was perfect.