fluttering your lashes like ashes and embers

Alastor's shadow pulled itself over him like a shroud; not external, not visible, but in his mind, sliding itself between the forefront of his mind and his eyes, blanking him gently out. He couldn't think too much, now. That pain was fresh and wet, a sticky feeling under his skin, an unyielding awareness of the density of his own body. He couldn't walk straight. Every movement hurt, and it was everything like being alive, and nothing at all like it, at the same time.

And that was accurate, and his shadow, the static that still hummed all around him, whispered gently that it was fine, that it would let him go again when it was safe to, but for now he would simply have to stumble forward and know that it was carrying him. It was, because it was a part of himself, and for that reason, he trusted it, and it was that, the black energy of his shadow, that helped carry him where Lotte's grip fell just slightly too short.

The walk back down the street was a swirl of panting nothingness, a desperate blindness like intoxication, even though Alastor was, technically, seeing everything around him: the tufts of dry grasses along the side of the road, the dust scuffing up under their boots, Lotte's frizz of wild hair from the corner of his eye, his shadow bouncing about underfoot, feeling out the space ahead of him to keep him steady, then licking back around to press at the small of his back and push him upright.

It was more than a small relief, when he found himself dumped onto Lotte's thin mattress, staring, reeling, at the rafters of her roof. They revolved slowly around him. How long would it be like this? He told himself that he could breathe properly now, and he did, and it steadied him. This was, indeed, like being too drunk, just a little too far past the realm of maintaining control over his body, but this, like drunkenness, would end. Alastor only needed to hold onto himself, until it did.

His head dropped to the side and took her in, scraped and flecked with her own blood. Pride swelled in his stomach, a smile spread lazy and slow across his face, his heavy eyelids lifting as he looked at her. "You did it," he said, this incredulous hint in his voice betraying that a part of him really hadn't believed she could. "That was aces, my dear, if I do say so." His arms splayed wide on the bed, one hand butting up against the wall and bending at the wrist, the other dangling loose over the side, near Lotte. He, too, could tell that he was somehow smaller now than he had been, but it didn't quite feel that way. If anything, he felt larger, smashing up against more of what was physically there in the room than before. "Now, I should think you owe me some of that whiskey I left you."