What happened was, simply put, nothing but a blur. It was nothing like Alastor envisioned it. He'd thought it would be so clear, and it caught him by surprise, in that it was nothing but.
One moment, a surge of motion beneath him as his horse balked at the deception, the fight to dig his knees in tight enough to his side that he wouldn't be thrown prematurely, but neither would he be too entangled for Lotte to pull him down. A flash of the witch's swirling skirt in the dark like a pale flag waving.
One moment, a sharp and outraged cry from Queen Lilith, the flash of her hand reaching towards him, miles too far to touch, before Alastor's body was tumbled from his mount in a tangle of limbs, both his own and Lotte's that mixed too closely for him to tell quite which was which. They struck together, sharp and ungainly, his shoulder and his hip hit the dirt hard and he was surprised to note that he felt it.
And then there was one more moment of awful eye contact with Lotte, before his shape twisted and his consciousness was dragged away from him on the back of another scream from the Queen.
That was the true blur, the impossible and improbable twisting of his body, forced to become the stag it so often was, but outside his own control, ripped too fast from the shape he'd been holding, so it spun his stomach and his mind into knots and left him panting and worthless, bucking in Lotte's arms while she - he guessed, he supposed - grasped at his antlers.
And then he was smaller, a fox or a cat, something biting and sharp and gnashing at Lotte's pale arms.
And then he was hot and sharp, something thoughtless and inanimate, a poker or a shapeless knot of iron, a piece of charcoal, he wasn't sure.
And then, then, he was pain, nothing else, and he was solid and whole in Lotte's arms, and there was a scream from the hellish host that seemed to blister his eardrums, but he was laughing now, bright and high and breathless while his fingers (shorter, darker, human) dug into Lotte's pale forearms, and he knew it had worked. His head tossed back. The laugh streamed out of him. Tears streamed out of him, wet and exhausted on his cheeks. It worked. They had done it.
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One moment, a surge of motion beneath him as his horse balked at the deception, the fight to dig his knees in tight enough to his side that he wouldn't be thrown prematurely, but neither would he be too entangled for Lotte to pull him down. A flash of the witch's swirling skirt in the dark like a pale flag waving.
One moment, a sharp and outraged cry from Queen Lilith, the flash of her hand reaching towards him, miles too far to touch, before Alastor's body was tumbled from his mount in a tangle of limbs, both his own and Lotte's that mixed too closely for him to tell quite which was which. They struck together, sharp and ungainly, his shoulder and his hip hit the dirt hard and he was surprised to note that he felt it.
And then there was one more moment of awful eye contact with Lotte, before his shape twisted and his consciousness was dragged away from him on the back of another scream from the Queen.
That was the true blur, the impossible and improbable twisting of his body, forced to become the stag it so often was, but outside his own control, ripped too fast from the shape he'd been holding, so it spun his stomach and his mind into knots and left him panting and worthless, bucking in Lotte's arms while she - he guessed, he supposed - grasped at his antlers.
And then he was smaller, a fox or a cat, something biting and sharp and gnashing at Lotte's pale arms.
And then he was hot and sharp, something thoughtless and inanimate, a poker or a shapeless knot of iron, a piece of charcoal, he wasn't sure.
And then, then, he was pain, nothing else, and he was solid and whole in Lotte's arms, and there was a scream from the hellish host that seemed to blister his eardrums, but he was laughing now, bright and high and breathless while his fingers (shorter, darker, human) dug into Lotte's pale forearms, and he knew it had worked. His head tossed back. The laugh streamed out of him. Tears streamed out of him, wet and exhausted on his cheeks. It worked. They had done it.
And he was collapsing.