Memory VI - A Lunatic's Farewell
- Pronouns
- She/Her
You would think that a species so defined by its endings would be good at them, but none of you are. You cling to dying embers for the last hint of warmth even as they burn you. It's almost as if you don't realise that endings are what you are and what you do. Even as you infect others with your sentiment, you value this tenacity above all things, even as it brings you nothing but suffering. Maybe a reframing will be the thing to finally get through your thick skull.
Don't think of this as an ending. Instead, consider it a change. Change is perhaps even more human than endings. Of course, change always hurts, you've figured that out by now, but isn't it preferable to an inarguable end? There's no point in petty defiance. Not anymore. Embrace it, and watch as you're reborn anew.
Don't think of this as an ending. Instead, consider it a change. Change is perhaps even more human than endings. Of course, change always hurts, you've figured that out by now, but isn't it preferable to an inarguable end? There's no point in petty defiance. Not anymore. Embrace it, and watch as you're reborn anew.
Memory VI - A Lunatic's Farewell
Luna Lovegood was a girl on the hunt. She was very often a girl on the hunt, but typically she didn't always know what she was looking for until she found it, at which point it became so very clear that she had to wonder how she could ever have been looking for anything else. It was a very clever way to live, and she thought that maybe people would be much happier if they got rid of the notion that they knew things and instead accepted the opposite.
She had a friend—one she fancied quite a bit—who considered herself something of a thing-knower, and it had only ever made her terribly unhappy. Always worried and depressed, and thinking about endings in a way that made Luna's heart squeeze tight with sorrow. Luna tried to get her to see that a book wasn't just the last page. All the pages before that mattered, too. That last page wouldn't even mean anything at all without the rest of it to fill the book up with hopes and dreams.
Luna though, was proud to say that the only thing she knew was that she didn't know anything at all. That isn't to say she didn't see things. In fact, she was quite sure she saw more than anyone else. It didn't give her any fantastic powers of knowing though, so the things she saw were accepted as easily as the things she didn't.
She'd realised at a young age that magic always spoke a bit more clearly to her than it did to anyone else. Well, not always, but Luna didn't think about endings, and certainly not accidental ones. She thought of it more like a beginning. A bad beginning filled with tears and pain and a hole in her life that her Daddy hadn't the energy to fill up himself, but that was the thing with beginnings; they were the only part you didn't get to pick. Ever since that day—which was just about always for the person she became and never at all for the person she was—the world had been filled to the brink with magic.
It was like a door had been opened somewhere in the back of her brain, or maybe the side. Whatever experiment it was that brought her beginning about, nobody else could see like she could. Her Daddy tried, but he was only ever humouring her. That was okay. He'd always been like that, in the same way that the person he was before never had. He did his best, always talking to her about what she saw and accepting that she knew what she was talking about, even though she secretly knew she didn't know anything at all.
There were swirls and eddies in the skin of the world, highs and lows, hiccups and coughs, bright and dark spots, and who knows how much else? A background layer to every sense giving her insight and telling her how very little she knew. Things which smelled or tasted or looked or sounded like an ocean or a puddle, twisting in and out and up and down and every which way you cared to name, and a few that you didn't. It had taken her so very long to come to terms with it. She thought that maybe it made her mad. Maybe it made everyone else mad for not being able to sense it. Maybe it made nobody mad at all, and it was the world that didn't make sense. Whatever the case, Luna had always had a sense for things (or at least, as always as mattered).
For all that she knew how little she knew, Luna had always loved pretending, and so she started to try to make sense of it. Certain swirls and snarls she saw a lot of earned names. Some of them, which looked more like the snags living things carried around than the ones that never-living, not-yet-living, and once-living things did, got written down. When she was little, she would spend time drawing what these invisible things might look like if they weren't so, before she realised how very rude that was. They were likely invisible for a reason, after all, and besides, they looked like snarls in the weave of everything, just like she saw them. Once she had that realisation, she opened up her Daddy's big books of creatures and saw that it wasn't the look of things that mattered, it was how they acted.
So she and her Daddy made names, and she wrote down behaviours, and even theorised about why these odd little things acted the way they did. Luna figured that she ought to understand better than anyone. She was odd, too. Her friend Ginny had made sure to say so before she stopped talking to her, and Ginny seemed to know all sorts of things that Luna didn't.
The thing she'd never much managed to categorise was the weight that some things had; like they were somehow more present than others. It didn't seem to have any pattern. Sometimes they were people—Professors Dumbledore and Snape, and Harry, Ron, and Hermione—and sometimes they were things—The Astronomy tower at Hogwarts, the Diary that had ruined last year, and the ballroom she'd seen in Black Manor. Luna had a habit of gravitating towards these sorts of things, too. It felt like if she hung around them enough, they might lend some of their extra realness to her. There wasn't any good way of telling if it worked, unfortunately. She couldn't see how real she was in comparison to anything else. Looking in the mirror just let her see the mirror. It was just one more thing she didn't know, like anything else.
One day, not long after a quidditch game in which Hufflepuff had won but Harry had most assuredly lost, Luna noticed something rather strange. Stranger than normal, at least. She was venturing out to help Hagrid gather useful plants at the edge of the wood—part of detention from Professor Snape for wondering why derk sprites loved him so much when she was supposed to be brewing—when she saw a dementor off past the wardline. It was just standing there being awful, as dementors were wont to do, but there was something different about it.
Most dementors, they sucked the skin of the world in and in and in, like they were starving and only the ripples from other people's snags could feed them. It was hard to see or feel or hear through, and she knew that if she got any closer to try then she wouldn't see anything but old beginnings that she wouldn't be able to help but feel as if they were endings, and that was the sort of awful experience she wouldn't wish on anyone.
The thing was, this one felt strange, and so by the curiosity that was her wont, her hunt began. She looked upon the rotted, decayed, floating carcass, looking for answers among the spirit of death; because she was right, and she really didn't know anything, and so she looked for answers in the unknowable like all the stupidest, pettiest humans tended to do. She should have known it wouldn't end well, but she was small, and the smaller humans always tended to be among the stupidest and pettiest examples of their filthy, disgusting, degenerate kind.
Luna tried to creep closer, and just before she was caught out by Hagrid, she saw it. The dementor with the un-tattered cloak that was looking right at Luna and judging, like it judged every ridiculous human it saw, was more real than the others. Underneath the inward spiral so deep it made her dizzy, it had a weight to it, and it tasted familiar in a way she couldn't place. Familiar like the songs she heard and felt and hummed but never named, or like home was familiar. Certainly, nothing normal for a dementor to be feeling like.
Hagrid caught her then, and her hunt ended. He asked what she'd been doing walking away, and she told him the truth. She'd been listening. He accepted it in the way that most people accepted Luna's strangeness: with a sideways glance and a shake of the head. Just one more person who didn't know how to listen when Luna talked, but that was okay.
For the rest of her detention, Luna thought about the familiar dementor that had more weight to its magic than it should. It was so strange and so familiar that it sat on the whole of her tongue—not just the tip—for hours and days after the fact, leaving her wondering if she hadn't managed to know something after all.
"You've been acting a bit off recently," Ginny said as they studied in the library one day, ignoring that she always thought Luna was a bit off. It was very kind of her to do, Luna thought. More than that, though, she was thinking about the strange dementor, why the weight was familiar, and a little bit about what she'd have for dinner.
"Have I?" she asked.
Ginny gave her a stern look, which Luna ignored. "Ever since your detention the other day. Did something happen?"
"All sorts of somethings happened. I think it would be stranger if they didn't." That earned her a pinched nose and a sigh, which Luna was accustomed to, but thought was certainly very odd. She was right, after all.
"What I mean is, did something happen out of the ordinary?"
"The wrigglewart on the edge of the forest is still all around. It's very late in the year for that, isn't it?" Luna cocked her head to the side to consider it. "Maybe the strange dementor I saw had something to do with it."
Ginny choked. Luna thought that was quite impressive given that the only thing in her mouth was her tongue. "What makes a dementor strange?" she asked once she'd recovered from her feat.
"It's just that I know this dementor," Luna said.
"How do—" she started, but was made to restart more quietly by the glare of Madam Pince. "How do you know a dementor?"
"I don't know." Luna smiled. "Strange, isn't it?"
"How do you not know how you know someone?"
"I don't know."
Ginny looked to the sky for a few seconds for reasons known only to her before setting eyes back on Luna. "So that's why you've been all off, then. You've been thinking about this dementor."
"Among other things." She'd been thinking about her maybe-more-than-friend more than normal since their day in the lake, but Ginny was always very strange about that, so she opted not to mention it. "I've been wondering. Do you think that dementors get lonely?"
"No," Ginny said easily.
"I think that I'd get lonely if everyone was too bothered by me to come close. Wouldn't you?"
"I suppose so," she said patiently, "but dementors aren't like us."
"Maybe, but you say that about the Slytherins, too," Luna pointed out. Ginny frowned because Luna was right, and then scowled because she saw where this was going.
"Please tell me you're not going to try to do something nice for the dementors."
Luna perked up. "I wasn't, but now you mention it, that's a very kind idea. It's hard to see if they've got wrackspurts, but I'll bet that we might be able to get rid of any they do have. Maybe then they'll be less sour."
"No," Ginny said.
"I think so, yes." And Luna stood and gathered her things, because she had just had the perfect idea for how to shoo wrackspurts away. "Are you coming?"
Ginny glared and grumbled and even dragged her feet a little, but the answer was 'yes' regardless. She was a good friend like that. Buoyed up by the support, Luna grabbed Ginny's hand and dragged her away, out into the halls, up the stairs, and down the stairs again, and past a very polite portrait to get some directions, and down the wrong way for a little while before realising that they had spoken to the portrait of Ilray the Deceiver, then finally down to the ground floor to find the greenhouses.
"If we were just coming here, I could've led us," Ginny complained, ignoring how much they'd laughed at every wrong turn.
"My way was more interesting," Luna said, and that was that as far as she cared.
It was a Saturday when they left the library and a Saturday when they arrived at the greenhouses, and Luna checked her wrist-dial to see that it was even the same Saturday! Not that she'd ever had that problem before, but it was good to check sometimes. Regardless, Professor Sprout opened up the Greenhouses on Saturdays for people who wanted to do extra work to catch up or study or just spend time with the plants. Luna often belonged to the latter category, because plants were easy to read when you could see and hear the things she could, and the sorts of people who loved to garden were rarely the sort to keep nargles around. Troublesome things, nargles. They'd always steal your homework when you weren't looking.
Professor Sprout was sat in the back of greenhouse one like always when they got there, grading papers and keeping an eye on things. Luna dragged Ginny in and past the other students working at their stations to come to rest before the squat professor. They were greeted with a smile as she set her quill aside to look up at the girls.
"Miss Weasley! Don't think I've seen you here outside of class before. Did Luna convince you to come take a look at the dirigible plums?"
Ginny gave Luna the strange sort of look she reserved just for her. "Er, no, Professor. I don't think so, at least. I'm not actually sure why I'm here."
"There's someone I know that I think has a wrackspurt infestation," Luna said eagerly, "and I was thinking that I could use a few flowers to make them something to help ward them off. Nobody deserves to be wracked by wrackspurts."
It must have been Professor Sprout's turn, because she, too, gave Luna the strange sort of look she reserved just for her. "Wrackspurts, dear?" she asked, smile still warm, if slightly befuddled.
Luna nodded sagely and gave a well-practised explanation. "They're invisible. They like to float in through your ears and make your brain go fuzzy."
"I see," Professor Sprout lied, but that was okay. "And you're sure conjured flowers won't do the job? Minerva's already taught you that one, hasn't she?"
"She has, and I don't think they will. Conjured flowers' tangles are all wrong," Luna said.
The professor nodded as if she knew what Luna was talking about, which was kind of her. "Well, you've always been careful with the plants, so I don't see the issue. The somnus weed's flowering over in greenhouse two, and so's the pixie tongue just there. Just make sure to only take a couple flowers per pot, alright?"
Luna nodded happily as she took Ginny's hand once more and started to drag her away. "Thank you, Professor!"
"Of course, just remember your gloves for the somnus weed!"
After retrieving a basket and a pair of gloves, mindful of Professor Sprout's watchful eye, the two girls set up by the pots of pixie tongue and set to work.
"I can't believe you got me doing extra herbology," Ginny grumbled. "Why are we here, anyway?"
Luna hummed along with the flowers, who seemed very happy to see her. "Do you recall how sad you were when Bill left for Egypt the first time?"
"Yeah, I… All of us were, really. Mum was being all smothering, and Dad started spending more time in the shed with his muggle things, and Ron kept on pretending it didn't bother him and making fun of me for crying, the tosser." She sighed, a nostalgic smile spreading across her face. "Haven't thought about it in ages. What's that got to do with it?"
"Do you remember when we met up by the river?" Luna prompted, deciding on a flower that was good enough and plucking it with a whispered thanks.
Ginny huffed a laugh. "I remember, yeah. Right mess, I was. We were playing castle, right? And you absolutely insisted on doing it away from the trees."
"Away from the river," Luna corrected.
She grimaced. "Right. And…" Something between comprehension and confusion dawned on Ginny's face. "I broke down, 'cause I was a dumb kid who thought Bill was never gonna come back, and you went and made me a flower crown."
Luna nodded, giving Ginny a soft smile before going back to her flower picking. "I couldn't see them, but you were covered in all sorts of wrackspurts. I thought the crown might make you feel better, and it did, didn't it?"
"Yeah, it did. It's just, can dementors even get wrackspurts?" Ginny asked. She didn't believe that anyone could, Luna could see and hear and feel that, but neither could her Daddy, and she appreciated the effort.
"I don't know," Luna said honestly. "But I think that trying to get rid of them would be a very nice way to find out, don't you?"
Ginny laughed and started looking through flowers in earnest. "Suppose so. Only, aren't you worried?"
Luna weighed the question. "I don't think so, no."
"But I saw you on the train, Luna. You were catatonic! I'm not gonna let you just go up to one on purpose."
"Yes," Luna allowed, "but we don't have to go up to it, do we? We learned to levitate things last year."
Ginny stopped just to blink for a moment before nodding. "Fair enough. I'm coming with, though."
"Of course," Luna agreed, and it was settled. Between the two of them it didn't take long at all to get a bounty of pixie tongue flowers fit for weaving. Once Luna was thus satisfied, they moved on to greenhouse two to find the somnus weed.
Ginny went quiet at some point, and Luna was happy to give her the room to think. She was very herself, after all, and so she only ever did any difficult thinking when there wasn't anything else to do or say. With how long it took, Luna figured it must have been a difficult subject indeed.
"Is it the infestation?" Luna finally asked when she noticed that Ginny had stopped in the middle of plucking the soporific thorns from one of the flowers.
She startled with a jerk and would have sent her into a long and restful sleep were it not for her thankfully thick gloves. "Sorry?"
"You were thinking terribly hard about something. Was it the gulping plimpy infestation? I think Professor Sprout ought to invest in growing some gurdyroot. Though, it does bring the gnomes around…"
"No," Ginny shook her head. "I was just… I'm sorry, hold on, is that gurdyroot dust you spread around our garden years back the reason we have gnomes?"
Luna considered it. "Oh, very possibly."
"Don't tell my mum that, she'll burn you at the bloody stake," Ginny snorted, then seemed to sombre up. "No, I was thinking that, well, you were always there for me, you know? And when you needed me, I just…" She shook her head with a grimace. "Shocked you're talking to me at all, really. Don't think I'd be that nice in your shoes."
Luna looked up at Ginny and let the strange thought get some weight and pull her head to the side. "Well, you said you were being stupid, right?"
Ginny nodded earnestly. "Thick, too. Dumbest thing I've ever done."
"And you're finished with that?"
"'Course I am. I'm here, aren't I?"
Luna smiled and got back to work. "Well, there you go."
Ginny put the flower she was working on down entirely. "What do you mean, there you go?"
"Just that."
She didn't seem to accept that answer, because she wouldn't be Ginny if she wasn't a bit stubborn, and so took off her glove to put a hand on Luna's arm. "I just mean… It had to have hurt, right? Me just ignoring you like that?"
Luna nodded. "You're my best friend. Of course it hurt."
"And you just forgive me like that?" She looked confused, which Luna couldn't help but think was dreadfully silly in a very Ginny way.
"Just because it did hurt, doesn't mean I have to keep letting it. I wanted my best friend back. Now I have her." Luna gave a sunny sort of long-suffering smile. "It's the simplest thing in the world, really."
After a moment, Ginny leaned back and gave Luna a look she didn't quite know how to decipher. "Well when you put it like that, I suppose it is."
"I can't believe this."
"You can't believe all sorts of things. That doesn't mean they're not real."
"No, I can't believe you."
"But you can see me."
"Luna, we are in black robes sneaking around outside with snow on the ground in the middle of the night. Getting seen is part of the problem!"
"It sounds like you believe it."
"Luna!"
Frankly, she thought Ginny was being ridiculous. It wasn't like they were going to get caught. It was midnight, after all, and even the professors had to sleep. Mrs Norris kept odd hours, true, but she never looked around outside, and she could be bribed with tuna and forehead scritches and stories about what the nargles got up to.
"I can't feel my toes, you know."
"It must be much colder where you're walking, because you've got thick socks on and a very good warming charm."
"And what about that murderer, huh? What if he finds us?"
"He won't."
"And how do you know that?"
"I just do." And she did, too. The night didn't have that kind of weight to it, though there was barely anyone who'd believe her if she said so. The only thing she was really worried about was that too-thin-looking black dog that Crookshanks had introduced her to, and who she'd fed a few times, but that was more worried for than about. Luna really did hope he was doing alright. Winter could be hard, even when you had enough to eat.
"Why are we even out here?" Ginny asked as they hurriedly marched out towards the Forbidden Forest, because as much as she did enjoy complaining, she had to run out of complaints eventually.
"Why don't you ever ask that before I drag you somewhere?"
That seemed to knock Ginny off-balance enough that her pace stalled for a moment. "Guess it's 'cause I trust you," she finally answered.
The thought laid a warm little dracosilph egg in Luna's heart and pushed a very nice feeling smile across her face. "I trust you too, Ginny."
"So?" Ginny prodded.
"So," Luna responded, because it was a very nice-sounding word. A good way to start a sentence, too. All soft edges worn long and smooth by the expectation of what came after it.
"So, why are we out here?"
"To finish the flower crowns, of course. And maybe deliver one of them." They crossed the threshold into the forest proper, the half-light from the snow dimming significantly. "The moonglow lily grows in the winter and glows at night. I thought it might be a nice addition."
Ginny stopped the seemingly-important self-assigned task of giving every tree a suspicious look to switch to the probably-also-as-important task of looking at Luna as if she'd said something confusing. It must have been important, at least, since everyone made such a job of it. "Crowns? As in, multiple?"
"Oh, almost certainly, yes," Luna hummed.
"Thought we were just making one for your sad dementor."
"I'm not sure if it's sad, I just know it's important." She considered that for a moment. "Though I suppose being sad is important, so maybe it must be."
Ginny rolled her eyes and returned to her suspicious glares. "So who are the other ones for?"
"I'm not sure yet," Luna answered honestly. "The dementor wasn't familiar because of itself, I don't think. It just reminded me of someone else I know."
"So that's who the other one's for," Ginny surmised. "Do I get to know who this mystery dementor-person is? They sound like a laugh."
"I'll tell you once I figure it out."
"Chock full of wisdom, you are."
"I like to think so."
It didn't take long before they found a patch of pale white flowers which glowed faintly. The light bounced off the snow all around, making the whole patch glow as bright as day. They stopped just to look at it for a moment, and Luna couldn't help but grin at the awed look on Ginny's face.
"Alright, I'll give this one to you," she finally decided. "This was worth waking up for. And the cold."
"And the risk of getting caught," Luna supplied.
"That too, yeah."
Without further ado, Luna gathered up a bundle, sat down, placed her basket of already-picked flowers between her and Ginny, and started weaving together a crown. The whole patch seemed to be humming as she did. Flowers were meant to grab attention, after all, and there was very little they seemed to like more than knowing they'd be made into decoration.
They wove in silence for a while, Luna delighting that Ginny still remembered from when she'd taught her how, until Ginny couldn't help but break what she no doubt heard as silence. Ginny wasn't very good at silence though, at least not when she wasn't thinking, so it wasn't a great surprise, and certainly not a burden.
"Any idea why Sprout doesn't grow these?"
"Most people don't think they're very useful," Luna replied easily. "I can't think of any potions that use them, but this is use enough for keeping, don't you think so?"
Ginny nodded absently. "Shocked you brought me instead of Hermione. Not her type of thing?" It was asked easily enough, but there was a sharp edge of something underneath her voice that Luna didn't know how to place.
"She would probably make it her type of thing if I asked her to, but she's so busy I wouldn't want to disturb her." It was easy to say and true as anything, so Luna said it.
"Great girlfriend she's turning out to be," Ginny grumbled, and Luna couldn't help but wonder if that was the strange edge.
"Do you think she's my girlfriend?"
Ginny stopped what she was doing, then Luna did too, because it seemed like a question that deserved attention. "I mean, you took her to your visit with the merfolk, and you're always off somewhere spending time with her even though she's always with Ron, and I know for a fact he thinks you're mad."
"You think I'm mad, too," Luna pointed out.
She flustered. "Yeah, but in a good way."
"And Hermione agrees with you."
Ginny rolled her eyes at that. "Bet she would. Point being, whenever I see you two, you're always hugging her, or kissing her cheek, or holding her hand, or whatever."
"We hug and hold hands all the time."
"That's different," Ginny insisted.
"How so?" She searched for an answer for that for a second before getting frustrated and channelling it into her flower crown.
"It just is." Luna accepted that as it was, and figured that Ginny probably had a point, even if she didn't know what it was. After thinking about it for a few moments, Luna made a concession.
"I think I'd like to be her girlfriend," she admitted.
Ginny's very aggressive weaving softened. "Even though she's too busy to spend time with you?"
"Hermione's got an important test of everything she's learned coming up. She needs to prepare for it. She still tries to include me, though, which is nice." Finally, something clicked in Luna's head, as things tended to do, and she gave Ginny a warm look. "Even if she did have the time, I'd still want to do this with you."
"Really?" Ginny asked.
"You're my best friend, Ginny," she said. "Just because I get along with other people doesn't mean I stop getting along with you. That would just be silly."
Ginny looked away. "Yeah, guess it would be." She said the words, but Luna could tell she didn't actually agree.
"I'll tell you something I won't tell her, if you want." At Ginny's surprised and eager and probably a few other things nod, she continued. "Back before I came to Hogwarts, Daddy and I would always spend all night every New Year's Eve picking moonglow lilies to put in our hair and dance around with. When we got too tired, we'd go inside to sit by the fire and he'd tell me stories about the seasons. He'd talk about all of them, but winter was always my favourite. Everything dies in winter, or it goes to sleep, and that's why it's the end of the year. It's a bit sad to look back and see that the year's ending, but it's a bit happy too, because we always look forward to the beginning of the next one.
"Which is why winter is at the start of every year. It's a reminder. You can't have a new beginning without the end of something old. And dementors are Death spirits. They'd know that better than anyone. That's why I wanted to make sure to put moonglow lilies in the flower crown, so they can see that something beautiful could be like them. Maybe then they'd feel less lonely."
Luna finished her crown along with her story and placed it on her head. Ginny followed suit not long after.
"That's a lot of thought for something so foul," she finally said.
"Maybe," Luna allowed, "but someone's got to think it." Satisfied with their work, she stood with a flourish. "Now, I think we ought to find it and give it our present. Come on."
She wasted no time at all in taking a suddenly much-warier Ginny's hand and leading her out within view of the wardline. Even if she couldn't feel magic like she could her own thoughts, it wouldn't have been difficult to find it. It was as if a line was carved in the air past which the many dementors guarding Hogwarts were forced to metaphorically pace. The cold got more biting even just seeing them, and Ginny's grip got even tighter, but they forged on regardless.
Tattered cloak after tattered cloak passed by, and Luna examined and dismissed each in turn. Finally, though, after nearly an hour of walking, they saw it: a dementor more terrible and foul than the rest. Its cloak had been worn neat by time, and its skin had begun to look merely grey, almost as if it could be mistaken for something living. Its features no longer sagged or thinned like they once had, and its bones no longer protruded quite so sharply. It was disgusting to look upon; rotten and decayed from its once-malformed visage.
The brash girl shuddered and removed the sentimental wreath of dead plants from her head, and the one whose memories tasted of the most curious things produced her focus and spoke a witch-spell into being. The wreath floated into the air, across the accursed barrier, and onto the head of the wretch they sought.
It felt something, to its disgust. Some lingering tinge of sentimental corruption borne of an eternity of supping on humanity. It shuddered to know that the day approached where such sentiment might be its norm, and for once wished that its knowledge of things to be might fail it in the face of the horrific fate that approached.
But fate marched closer regardless, and the wretched thing had grown too damnably human to prefer an ending over a change.
The girls made their humour noises filled with some strange mix of blessed-cursed emotions the monstrosity couldn't place amongst the maelstrom of its own, save for pride. It had supped on so much pride in its days feasting on humanity's most wretched; identifying it was simple. The girls moved their mouths and said their sound-words at each other and at the target of their accursed charity before giving the demon a wave and finally leaving. Its instinct was to reach out and strangle them tightly to itself, but it was stopped. Not just by the old magics haunting the grounds, but by the knowledge that someday soon it would be the sort of thing which would regret it. Could regret it. So, they walked away and took their human emotions with them, leaving their victim with none but its own to contend with.
They went away from the wretch and the kin it would soon seek to abandon—the kin who would bring its end if they knew how it felt, or even that it felt at all. But not just away, they walked towards, too. Towards warmth, towards their own kin, and towards their castle. Most importantly, though, most obviously and critically and a thousand thousand other ugly human words for the human concept of importance it shouldn't be feeling outside of the memories it harvested:
They walked, inevitably, towards you.
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