*A bit of light blinks out in the dark, only a lantern but looking more like a confused star come too close to the earth. It's impossible to tell how far from the house it is, air stretches on for miles over the moors that isolate the Black's gothic getaway from the rest of civilisation. Distance is only interrupted here by scrub and heather and bog, and what looks far away might actually be gaining on you faster than you expected.
Regulus's face feels stiff from not blinking, and with a twig-like arm he raises the heavy light to the level of his eye, looking for any patches of darkness that might contain the towering figures he's asked to meet him here. It's over the silhouette of the rooftop that he finally sees something, a black mass whispering between too thin chimneys and back into shadow as it bypasses Barty inside and glides over the cold, wild ground toward Regulus.*
*The inexperienced have used musty, incomplete words like 'smoke' and 'velvet' to describe what happens next. However, it's more like spilling ink - all shrapnel and fast-expanding thickness. It doesn't come closer. Instead, it unfolds in Regulus' line of vision until there's only scabbed arms, a blank hood and briny tide pushing against the back of his knees, heavy and cold.*
*Alone in the night, in the dark places of England without the constant light of London that Regulus had grown up with, one little lantern to light the way can seem like the brightest thing in the world. As the cloaked figures move in to it's circle however, Regulus feels like for all intents and purposes that his lamp has been extinguished. Light still falls on the sparse ground, but it seems as dark as midnight even so.
As always, there is a brief stutter of panic in his chest as he worries that he's forgotten how to speak to the creatures towering around him, blocking the shape of his family's home from view. Soon enough it comes to him, though, and his memories come with hasty sloppiness to make up for that dangerous pause of stage fright.
*There is no waste in preamble, no time sacrificed in plunging Regulus back into the cold lake. Instead, the water drains around his ankles and is replaced by slightly itchy, woollen socks. The grass around him juts upward, rushing until it meets a now vaulted sky, colours and textures draining into stone. Most of all, it's humid - a sudden, awkward combination of stuffy overheating and a chilly January night.
His peripheral is nothing but Barty. Eyes and yellow hair and a pouting voice, "-I knew you didn't find it yet."*
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Regulus's face feels stiff from not blinking, and with a twig-like arm he raises the heavy light to the level of his eye, looking for any patches of darkness that might contain the towering figures he's asked to meet him here. It's over the silhouette of the rooftop that he finally sees something, a black mass whispering between too thin chimneys and back into shadow as it bypasses Barty inside and glides over the cold, wild ground toward Regulus.*
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As always, there is a brief stutter of panic in his chest as he worries that he's forgotten how to speak to the creatures towering around him, blocking the shape of his family's home from view. Soon enough it comes to him, though, and his memories come with hasty sloppiness to make up for that dangerous pause of stage fright.
"You heard-" "-me-" "-calling..."*
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His peripheral is nothing but Barty. Eyes and yellow hair and a pouting voice, "-I knew you didn't find it yet."*
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