Lit up, alive, Alastor buzzed around Lotte. He couldn't have stopped moving around her in his circle if he wanted to, his pace methodical and even, crushing a dented path into the newly-fertile earth. Well, that wasn't true - he could do anything he wanted to, but he didn't want to stop moving, even if it felt compulsory to do so. The grinding gear of his steps mimicked the gears whirling in his head. His shadow followed him like a plume of dark smoke. This was more intoxicating than whiskey. He almost didn't know where to begin, and the idea that something was just on the border of stumping him, of feeling impossible, made him laugh out loud.
There was almost no risk. He wasn't expecting it to work, anyway, so what did it matter if he said it out loud? What did it matter if he gave voice to things that mortals weren't supposed to hear? And why, really, did such things exist at all, if no one was meant to hear them?
He chuckled in response to Lotte's words. Yes, a challenge. That was exactly what it was, a forbidden game, a test. Alastor was so imbued with magic now, so a part of the fabric of it, he didn't feel magical anymore. Not in the way he had when he was a boy, anyway, wandering the streets at night. Not in the way one did when they stood on the veranda in the rain, hiding a cigarette from their mothers, craning a painfully human ear for the strains of music floating down from the street bands around the block, playing on in spite of the rivulets of water streaming down the gutters, down the edges of the streets. Not in the way that one felt magical crouched under the canopy of the bayou, tending a flame in a cast iron pot stolen from home. No, those feelings didn't quite come, anymore. But this was similar to it. This was enough.
"Nothing much," he said, a manic brightness in the glow of his eyes. It would be difficult to look at, just a little too bright and stinging, though the light that burned in them didn't illuminate far beyond Alastor's body. "It's a secret." He paused to look Lotte in the eye again, waggling his finger at her. "You better not tell. What trouble we'd be in, then!"
Pacing again, he went on, gesturing widely with his long fingers to punctuate his words. "All manner of spirits walk free on Halloween - myself and the Hellish host included. When the clock strikes midnight, the Queen of Hell goes riding, did you know that? I'll be with her. No summoning required."
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Lit up, alive, Alastor buzzed around Lotte. He couldn't have stopped moving around her in his circle if he wanted to, his pace methodical and even, crushing a dented path into the newly-fertile earth. Well, that wasn't true - he could do anything he wanted to, but he didn't want to stop moving, even if it felt compulsory to do so. The grinding gear of his steps mimicked the gears whirling in his head. His shadow followed him like a plume of dark smoke. This was more intoxicating than whiskey. He almost didn't know where to begin, and the idea that something was just on the border of stumping him, of feeling impossible, made him laugh out loud.
There was almost no risk. He wasn't expecting it to work, anyway, so what did it matter if he said it out loud? What did it matter if he gave voice to things that mortals weren't supposed to hear? And why, really, did such things exist at all, if no one was meant to hear them?
He chuckled in response to Lotte's words. Yes, a challenge. That was exactly what it was, a forbidden game, a test. Alastor was so imbued with magic now, so a part of the fabric of it, he didn't feel magical anymore. Not in the way he had when he was a boy, anyway, wandering the streets at night. Not in the way one did when they stood on the veranda in the rain, hiding a cigarette from their mothers, craning a painfully human ear for the strains of music floating down from the street bands around the block, playing on in spite of the rivulets of water streaming down the gutters, down the edges of the streets. Not in the way that one felt magical crouched under the canopy of the bayou, tending a flame in a cast iron pot stolen from home. No, those feelings didn't quite come, anymore. But this was similar to it. This was enough.
"Nothing much," he said, a manic brightness in the glow of his eyes. It would be difficult to look at, just a little too bright and stinging, though the light that burned in them didn't illuminate far beyond Alastor's body. "It's a secret." He paused to look Lotte in the eye again, waggling his finger at her. "You better not tell. What trouble we'd be in, then!"
Pacing again, he went on, gesturing widely with his long fingers to punctuate his words. "All manner of spirits walk free on Halloween - myself and the Hellish host included. When the clock strikes midnight, the Queen of Hell goes riding, did you know that? I'll be with her. No summoning required."