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Messages - Altair
1
Maledictus, huh?
Body dysphoria.
To be forced to take on the permanent form of an animal.
Altair had to mull that over for a moment. It wasn't a bad answer.
He drew a breath.
"Divination can be a rather uncomfortable ability to have. And psychometry can lead you to see things you did not expect. Of course, that is a reason why we try to do these things in a controlled manner."
From what he could tell, Duckheart was not a highly skilled diviner, so it was probably limited what he could get access to anyway.
"I try not to take on students that look for fairytales around every corner," he said, and there was a faint tilt at the corner of his mouth.
It was a subtle way of letting the young man know that he'd been suspected to being in that category, but it was not a rejection.
2
« on: 03/19/2025 at 21:41 »
"It certainly does," said Altair.
Then, with a bit of hesitation --
"What's the darkest story you know?"
3
« on: 03/10/2025 at 21:43 »
Hear its stories.
The young man's approach to the subject carried with it an air of romanticism.
"You are aware that not all stories have happy endings?"
4
« on: 03/10/2025 at 21:08 »
14th March 1974
To Francis, I tore you apart. And I would have done it again. And again. And again. May you rot in hell. Your protegee, Lukas Altair.
5
« on: 01/04/2025 at 12:24 »
It was dawning on him now. What Altair saw in Tigran reminded him of the discussions he'd once had with Icarus. Of his own way of thinking in the past, in particular before he'd actually gained the Sight.
It was an intricate exercise, trying to make sense of surroundings that did not seem to want to make sense. And he recognised the intellectual toll that it took on anyone trying to make such an assessment.
It was always interesting, too, when poked into the area of divination, the one magical approach that, more than anything, relied on intuition. Then again, even science was built on theories, as constantly revised and renewed, and most of the time the world just did what the world wanted to do, as strictly defined by contextual matters.
"I probably do," he told to the other Ravenclaw, giving a little shrug.
"Do I understand right then, that you apply the term mind the way many of us apply spirit?" Which was not strictly different, conceptually, but which - at least to him - was an important way of distinguishing between being in the body and being outside of the body.
(Some people called it soul when it came to the humans of this world, so Altair was also picking a term here that might not be immediately understandable.)
When he applied those terms, everything else that Tigran had said appeared to fall more or less into place.
"I have to admit that I've mostly gone and retrieved people's lost spirits on my own. Then again, I am also a dreadful potioneer."
To that, he cheered with an empty cup, and realised that he had forgotten to offer anything to Tigran.
6
« on: 01/04/2025 at 11:55 »
Patience was not his virtue. Had never been, not as a student, nor as a professor. In case of the latter, it had made him too hard, to angular in his dealings with the students. Rather than build up them he'd used them selfishly as a source to knowledge, to build a case of his own.
That conscience floated through him now, and he let it linger. To feel at the degree to which he tried to assign guilt, and how this was, most of all, directed to himself. There were a couple of ways of interpreting it. He could either read himself as a person that stole the ideas of others. Or he could be more generous, and take into account the degree to which he tried to place them on an equal footing as himself. Because their thoughts and emotions mattered to him.
Like most things, it was hardly ever so clear cut. He did not believe in the blacks and whites. But introspection was useful, sometimes.
"He’s running from change. Or maybe… from what change could mean for people like him."
He could tell that she was thinking, and so, he let her.
What he really needed was input, something new to add to the problems that he had engineered in his mind, a fresh breath of something that could brush against them and topple them over and give way to solutions that he'd previously thought impossible.
However, there was also the fact that he was somewhere between thirty and fourty years her senior. And the ideas of rich, old, white men had a tendency to become rigid, to calcify, stale and settle.
"Maybe it’s easier to pretend the world is simple. That there are clear lines between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Maybe Bellestorm is afraid of what happens if those lines disappear. If people like my dad, my sister… if they’re no longer something to be feared, but something to be understood."
He gave a slow nod in signal that he was following. It was, in part, a wise assessment, but he feared that they were on their way to settling into another old pattern.
Altair made a motion with a hand and his circle reappeared, shimmering against the surface of their table this time.
"I tend to try to flip things on their head," explained, with a mild smile. "To try to understand what's going on in their minds and hearts. So, from that viewpoint, it looks to me like we have two groups that are rooting for what you call change. Now, the way you describe it, one of those is going backwards --"
He gave the circle a spin.
"-- and the other is going forward."
Another gesture, and the circle changed directions.
"Now, this to me looks familiar - what I see is black and white, backwards and forwards, good and bad. If one direction equals us, and the other equals them, how do we move away from the us-them dynamic?"
He made another gesture, and the circle became a ball and, as it took on more and more details it became apparent that it was a tiny sun. Even a few tiny planets appeared circling it, and some of these planets had little moons. They appeared to have taken on a life of their own, going in circles within circles. But he didn't look at them, he was staring at the table surface for a moment, searching for words that would let her know that she did not find her thinking wrong. Simply, that he thought there was much more potential out there to be found.
"What I'm wondering is this: If we are more complicated than that, how will pushing us into the same framework contribute to breaking that cycle?"
Of course, this was also deeply entangled with the matter of emotion, of humanity - that very real, raw thing that defined them.
"But also, what if we imagined that they were as afraid of us as we are of them? Could there be a way to learn to understand why they were afraid? And how could we go about making us into something to be understood rather than to be feared?"
His gaze lingered on her now, a sheen of silver in one eye.
7
« on: 12/30/2024 at 20:37 »
Memory, he supposed, was a thing.
Then again, it was odd for Tigran to forget. It seemed important to his ideas around the Magical Mind.
But metallurgy was actually a really good analogy for helping him to understand. Quenching in that context was about freezing the molecules by sudden exposure to cold, forcing them to remain in a position they would not if cooled down more slowly. Oftentimes this was done to harden the edge of a blade. The downside to making the metal harder was, however, that it also became more brittle.
(Courtesy of his studies into Alchemy).
He understood that Tigran was probably thinking about the practice of emptying one's mind. But he was still struggling to follow.
Which was interesting in itself, given there were so many ways of applying magic.
"I don't think I do any the things that you're trying to describe," he said. "Then again, I still don't quite understand." He smiled apologetically. The two could very well be connected - it was hard to understand something you had not experienced or studied.
"Spirits. How?"
He gave a shrug and a wry smile.
"I have my ways."
8
« on: 12/30/2024 at 19:29 »
September 1973
"Soo," he said, leaning back in his chair. "Why Psychometry?"
9
« on: 12/28/2024 at 15:20 »
His strategy this time was simply to share. He forgot, sometimes, how uncomfortable it was to have someone prodding at you, especially when you were more of the private type yourself.
(It used to be so easy for him to pick people's minds without saying anything at all.)
"I don’t recommend the potions from St. Mungos if your mind gets truly overwhelmed as I feel as if they linger reducing ones inner control."
He gave a slight smile. So they had part of that experience in common, then.
He noticed the shift in Tigran's speaking pattern. Wondered at the sudden openness and whether what he was trying to do was finally succeeding.
(It was a trap, but he did not have any bad intentions - merely curiosity. Genuine interest.)
"Did you just open your mind in a free environment? Or did you use tools or assistance to ensure control of what could potentially come in when you attempted to quench your mind?"
"I meant, I don't understand precisely what you meant when you talked about it last time - quenching the mind - what do you mean by quench?"
He attempted to clarify. Not intending to say that there were a wrong way to doing this. As far as he was concerned, the only limitation was creativity and, to a certain point, magical skill.
"When I go into the Otherworld, I use aids," he admitted. "I cannot protect myself in a sleeping state, so I use lingering magic. Or spirits." He gestured into the air, as to make a point of their presence. The task of some of them was merely to protect him from the others.
10
« on: 12/28/2024 at 14:54 »
He had not expected this. For her to turn up like this. For her to sit down in the chair as suggested and, now, to lean in to his words and his presence. A part of him, alluring as it was, wondered if there was some sort of power in him that had made this happen, that he'd somehow tapped over into his lost legilimency to convince her, in her own mind, to remain.
A different part of him felt at the warmth gathering at his chest. Altair was someone used to his dark corridors and sullen solitude, to walls barricaded with magic and an existence dependent on his condition for every passing day, the volativity of the spirits that he had summoned. He was used to living under the weight of his decisions, of guilt and shame, and the feeling of having to be a weapon - for the Supra Mortalitas, for Francis, and for Pryce.
The feeling of being turned down and abandoned when he'd needed her the most.
Unlovable.
(It had been twenty years.)
But Eva leaned into it. And while it had not been his fate to have children, and he had never thought of himself as capable of bringing them up the way they deserved, he had imagined, sometimes, what it could have been like.
Now they were two flames caught in an important moment, flickering more strongly with the added heat, the growing base of fuel.
She reminded him of all of the important things. She reminded him of his priviledge, as a man, as a pureblood. And he knew very well that he walked right through these waters, these waves - these goddamn tsumanis - with his feet dry due to an undeserved priviledge assigned to him at birth.
"Bellestorm wants to take us back. He talks about returning to the way things were before, as if that would fix everything. But it feels like a retreat. Like we’re running from something."
It was a good assessment and he leaned back, giving her space.
Continue.
"I just want to make sure we don’t forget the ones who are already being pushed aside. I just want to make sure we don’t let it happen again."
(Unreal?)
Their angles were radically different, but it did not mean he did not agree. That he could not see. That he could not feel the surge of her emotion in his chest. Continuing to grow the fire that had awakened with the election, the electricity of possibility in a moment of momentum.
And he felt a wave of gratefulness - for her presence, for the fact that he'd leaned into his own intuition and ventured into the evening. For being able to speak his mind and not be alone.
(Lately, he'd been thinking about returning to teaching and now that desire intensified. There was a good chance that things would get worse. As they always appeared to do, before they got better.
But he was done assassinating politicians.)
"I think you're onto something," he said.
Again, he raised a hand to tap at his temple.
"But we have to be smart. So hold on to that picture - imagine that he's running. What is he running from?"
11
« on: 12/28/2024 at 09:39 »
They were subtle changes, he knew. Out here he looked less like someone special and more like the anonymous guy in the corner. When out like this he tended to have a signature look, tried to not draw attention. His simple, black cape was nothing compared to the intricate, shimmering thing, the one with the tree design that shone like stars, that he'd not really donned since he last taught. There was a time for grabbing onto and owning that attention, and there was a time for simply living, for testing his own waters.
"Eva," he repeated, taking the name in his mouth for what was quite possibly the first time. Still it felt familiar to him, if only because it was used as the Norwegian equivalent to the English Eve, from the biblical story of the Genesis.
Though he hardly spoke his first language anymore except for certain incantations and, occassionally, curses, it had a distinct Scandinavian feel that reminded of something he'd once called home.
Her laugh came unexpected, but not fully so. People tended to laugh when faced with something that was too much to handle at the given moment. A defence mechanism. He knew, because he'd laughed at inappropriate times too, before he'd recognised what it was. Nowadays he was mostly quiet, observing. But this, too, touched something in him.
"It’s always the same faces, shouting the same things... while everything rots beneath them."
He nodded, slowly.
And drew a circle in the air with the finger of his right hand. When he stopped, a faint circle of light remained, gently spinning. It morphed into a snake biting at its own tail - and dispersed into the air like smoke.
"It's the cycle," he said, appreciating her frankness, but he wasn't looking at her, he was looking at them.
"But it's complicated," he continued. "They're humans too, thinking and feeling and wanting change."
His hand reached for his glass and he took another sip.
"So how do we break it?"
And the look that he sent her then was not that of the professor, not that of someone of any higher authority. But it was also not of someone who was defeated - not at all, Altair felt like he was finally back on some sort of rise.
No, he was looking for the outside perspective. Something to break the brooding nihilism that was so easy to fall into when you trudged around your own, constant mindspace.
12
« on: 12/27/2024 at 13:48 »
There was a wall. And he stood now, looking down on the reading figure, considering his position. He had once made himself too reliant on Legilimency, as made clear in his failing relationships, by his sudden helplessness as the power had been ripped from his hands. And he had realised how some of his isolation, his loneliness, could, on one hand, be traced to the constant suspicion placed on him for knowing too much, on the other to not actually having to converse with anyone to get a rough understanding of what they were about. As someone as private in his affairs as Altair, it provided a paradox, and he took his moment to feel at it, to allow for the ambigousness to pass through him without pushing away the taste of phantom bitterness that it left on his tongue. To be powerful was not a place of cheating, but it was one of priviledge. He had to leave room to contemplate the complexity of co-existence in a world such as theirs. Looking at the reading boy, he also understood something else. That what Tigran wanted right now, was to read. Seeing this simply required a basis of social intelligence and a general respect for other people's time and space. Then again, learning to See had provided him with a new set of tools to understanding his own and other people's existence, slipping into his subconscience as easily as his Legilimency had done, many years prior. "Some day, you'll become a good Occlumens," he commented, giving the boy the hint of a smile. And he turned the corner, and disappeared.
Mid July 1973
"I struggle with the concept of quenching my mind," he said, his voice saturated with an absent-minded thoughtfulness. "My mode has been to open all the channels and try to learn how to handle it." He placed the cup on Tigran's desk. It was the same cup that he'd been offered last time, though it had been cleaned and refilled with a fresh brew of coffee. "But at times it has left me completely overwhelmed and unable to deal with the world at all." The cup was accompanied by his own. Under his other arm was a small pile of books, which he turned to placing inside one of the bookshelves. His black shirt was folded back, revealing the black ink of an Ouroborous tattoo at his underarm. "But I always thought there was a real link between psychology and divination - it's one of the reasons why I turned to alchemy, which provided a spiritual dimension for what can come accross as an almost scientific framework."
13
« on: 12/25/2024 at 14:12 »
"My interest now is more in understanding the magical mind. Though I imagine that perspective research wise if you have recommendations would be interesting still to read about."
"Hmm," he said, releasing the noise both as one of confirmation that he'd registered what was said, and that he might not be completely satisfied. It occurred to him that they were jumping back and forth.
And he - he'd long since stepped into the role of the Professor. He was trying to get his way out of steering the conversation and into some sort of ground, to grasp at the essence of what was Tigran, beyond that of necessity.
Altair had had the luxury of never struggling much with the economic aspects of things, if only because he'd somehow managed to ally himself with the most powerful of forces. This conversation was a good reminder.
His attention was still on the spirits - he'd have to get over there to prevent things from escalating - but he wasn't done yet.
"If you could choose anything, what would you have liked to do?"
For all this talk of the magical mind, he wasn't convinced that it wasn't just a dead end. Then again, it could also be that Tigran was keeping him on the surface level, something that he could understand.
14
« on: 12/25/2024 at 10:45 »
It took little effort to understand that this was a man that was used to moving about the world. One that cast a shadow, and who knew how to use it to his advantage. Furthermore, Altair was familiar with that mask of neutrality, the veiling of emotion. They were alike in that matter, and that was reason enough to be careful.
People like them had secrets.
I revealed vulnerability, peaking his curiosity, morphing the atmosphere into something slightly more humane.
And yet, there was no doubt that theirs was a meeting of two powerful predators.
It must have been a curious display for the boy, to watch the adults consider each other in such a careful manner.
"There are many books on Alchemy. This particular one is much more than that."
Altair said nothing. It was not uncommon for a customer to lecture him about their books. Once upon a time, when he was younger, he would have quipped back, but now he merely inhaled, exhaled, let it go. Reminded himself that it was quite possible that the book held secrets that were missing from the version he had stored on the lower floors of Muspell.
Besides, his Occlumency helped navigate rowdy waters.
Damascus. Europe. France.
He didn't write now, putting the ravenfeather down on the clear glass. His tall figure leaned forward over the counter slightly, palms down against its surface, considering.
Altair had history with France, even if he'd never learned the language. He'd once taught there, in Beauxbatons, a subject as dubious as Theory of the Dark Arts. He'd liked their inclination to allow such a subject in the first place.
Again, his eyes found the other's, stayed with them. Things would usually stand or fall with the following question.
"Would you be open to a performance of psychometry?" he asked, delivering it as straight forward as possible. Letting him into their home, with all that this entailed, was something not everybody were too keen on.
"It would require me to go to Damascus and have a look at said bookshelf. Which should remain as untouched as possible."
In the case of specific objects, psychometry, especially when coupled with his strings to the spirit world, was his most powerful tool. It revealed the webs that he needed to follow its journey. In the case of missing objects, that psychometry became even more important, as all divination might have to be performed indirectly.
"Discretion guaranteed," he added, unable to hide the fact that he wouldn't mind, really, having a look at this particular collection.
And he knew that taking on this job was either going to be a triuph, or a disaster.
15
« on: 12/25/2024 at 00:26 »
He knew little about her, that was the truth of it.
He knew she was pureblood, like so many others in prestigous positions.
Their hands folded around each other, then parted.
"I'll admit I never expected Anneka would retire. Hopefully I can ensure that the professor's aren't being too soft on the children."
It was hard not to smirk at that. Altair had definitely not been known for being too soft. On the contrary, he'd tended to be unreasonably hard, and present at the Castle for entirely selfish reasons. As though he didn't really want to be around children.
Or people.
Or rules.
"There seems to have been a lot of changes there lately," he commented. Nowadays he knew almost none of them - he knew Leighton, of course, and he knew Winchester mostly by name. And, well, he knew the male Amberghast, though hardly in a friendly way. It made it hard for him to pay proper attention to what was going on.
"Drink?" he offered, casting a glance back at the shelves behind the bar.
16
« on: 12/24/2024 at 14:08 »
She fit into the atmosphere, he thought - arriving with the same tension, the same sort of unfurled potential. As though she had something brewing within her, unresolved and alive and lingering, speaking of storms. It arrived in confirmation that they were on the same page, although they appeared to respond with different moods.
"How long’s it been? Fifteen years? You haven’t changed a bit, Professor."
He felt the corners of his lip tilt upward in response to the flatness of her tone, perhaps a little inappropriately, mildly entertained.
"Oh, I have," he retorted, giving a tap to his left temple to direct her attention to an eye that gave the unmistaken impression of cataract, although that was by no means what it really was. The lifeless, cloudy grey contrasted with the liveliness of the other, blue.
Now, this was just the tip of the iceberg, the surface of the cold waters into which he had imerged himself in - fifteen years ago, indeed. He had spent most of those fifteen years sick with trying to deal with the new surge of magic that he'd unlocked (and the consequences to having lost another part of his soul, resulting in a magic both more raw, and more of a danger to himself and others).
"And you have, too. - Kedding, right?" he said, locking her in his gaze. While he did not remember her first name, he was pretty sure this was a daughter of Aubrey and Charlie Kedding - both of which he'd also taught, once upon a time way back, an attestment to his dedication to the cause, however turbulent the circumstances.
Though his dedication had never been plain and straight forward, he'd always been there wearing his dark shadow, to distract them and plant his ideas in the hope that they - good as they were, most of the time - would not end up blinded by the light.
The world was complicated. He was complicated. They were all complicated.
And the mission he'd been bestowed by the Order for the Return of All Rights had never seized. They could turn mad and light their fires around him, but he'd already burned and come back out of it and burned again.
(At the corner of his eye, the bar caught fire, flames licking bright and yellow from floor to ceiling - Kedding, Real, but fire Unreal, he thought.)
"I take it you're not too impressed with the political situation either, then?" he prodded.
And it was just like him to disappear and then resurface with some new, unexplainable sort of life. It was just like him to resurface when something was about to happen, as though he fed on the suspense of the moment and needed the charge to get pushed out of his inertia, the everlasting apathy that came as a consequence to ripping yourself apart. Now it was running through his veins, thumping through his heart.
Even negative developments held potential for positive renewal.
(It was not the people that were broken, it was the system.)
17
« on: 12/21/2024 at 12:34 »
Altair took a sip from his coffee. It swirled darkly in its porcelain container.
And he took a moment to try to unwrap what he'd just heard. Quelling the magical mind while retaining the ability to perform spells was a little unspecific - then again, as were most ideas when at the stage of being ideas.
He wondered what exactly quelling the magical mind entailed.
"People are rather complicated," he agreed.
(That was what he liked about them.)
He stood up then, casting a glance over a bookshelf. At first he'd thought a new customer had arrived, but this was one of his (the spirits). And he better pay attention, because it seemed like something was up over there.
"Is that something you'd like to explore?" he asked.
Still wrapping back layers.
Research was what he was passionate about, after all.
18
« on: 12/21/2024 at 10:15 »
He needed but a direction, allowing himself to be pulled into the trajectory offered, and he moved quietly but without hesitation, bathed in the gold light of Disgleirio's corridors. Voices let him know they were not alone, but the shadows did too, flickering before him in the dim light, avoiding its penetration.
Like a stream, they spilled into the heart of house and he ended up by the windows, staring out to feel a stir at the foreign landscape. Foreign not because he had not been to Wales or could not find anything like it in his part of England, but because he had grown up in love with the forest surrounding his own family's house.
The great outdoors had always meant a lot to him.
"Make yourself comfortable."
The voice of the other drew him out of his head, and he placed the pack of books on the low table in a break of routine. At this point he would usually have unpacked them with great care, spreading them on a great dining table or desk, then hold them up to the customer for their close inspection. Sitting on their golden chairs, in rooms of great portraits with carved frames, they would have offered their thoughts and snarky comments and demands of discount.
But this was no routine delivery.
Accepting the glass, he remained standing a moment longer, drifting back to the view, as though needing the light. The room was spectacular, and much to his liking, if not for the portraits on the floor above. It reminded of Muspell, if only the part that was open to the public. Most of his place was hidden on the floors underground, most as a means for confining and protecting against the things that he had dragged from the deep recesses of the world.
"Eve won't be joining us today, I'm afraid."
"That's a pity," he said - words that he meant but could not feel. For all that he would love to see Eve, it was enough to be facing one old schoolmate in his haunted manor. He caught the hint of warmth in Cassius' tone, and appreciated it, unconcerned whether it was actually meant for Altair or just spurred by a real love for the former Raven, now Cassius' wife.
"How are you?"
It was at this point that they truly made contact, when Altair turned his gaze from the view to meet and linger on the eyes of Cassius Ellwood-Luxe. It was in the tone of his voice, in the lines of his face, an expression of something real. It touched at something dark, something deep surging in Altair's chest, a ragged edge where he'd torn at the most valuable parts of his being.
And he sat down, placing one leg over the other, dragging a long-fingered hand through dark hair.
His encounters with Eve had always been saturated with his demons and he saw them now, dispersing into dark corners to soak in the secrets of the Ellwood-Luxe Family and House, silently intermingling. They would work to gather information, though not because he'd told them to. It was a long time since the fragmented creature that was Altair had been whole, and over time he'd entered into symbiosis with some of the things that he'd encountered - most often they joined with him and he simply could not get rid of them.
"I don't know," he answered, honestly. The best description that he had of his current state was feeling empty, but it was not necessarily emptiness in a bad sense. Despite the unravelling of late politics, and the fact that his vision sent him on a spin more often than not (just then, for example, he could see one of the manor's walls crumbling and falling to the ground in an eerie silence, books fluttering to the floor like snowflakes*).
"After accomplishing pretty much everything I set out to, it's as though I've finally gained access to things that I should have processed twenty years ago, and more."
His sin had always been Greed, never Pride. But he was proud, now - despite the road to getting there, he'd walked his path. And in this self-forged chaos, there was an unmistaken, if unsettling, peace.
"How about you?"
The blue of his seeing eye remained lively, a portal to the student he'd once been.
*Altair suffers from seeing things that are not real - he can sometimes tell, but often not.
19
« on: 12/19/2024 at 17:28 »
Mr. Vega.
His response to the name was unexpected, as though it did not truly belong to him. As though she'd described someone else, or even used simple words, such as pronouns, by which he was unable to recognise himself. Mr. Vega made him feel like a snake that had grown too large and was now staring down at the stiff, lifeless skin that he'd already shed.
It was a choice that he had made a long time ago, and which had been right. That was ok though - one way to learn about yourself was to have others bounce your thoughts back at you from a different context. When finding yourself in doubt, it was nice to find the confirmation resonating deeply within.
"Do you mean in this precise moment? Or do you mean, more broadly, for every misstep and calculated chaos that may have led you here? Because those are two very different questions, though, I suspect, the answers might share the same root."
Her words struck something in him and he could feel a line forming on his forehead.
He did know whether he agreed with this. He understood where she was coming from though. He particularly understood, if she also already knew who he was (which a lot of people did, admittably).
In the past, her way of conflicting with his expectations might have annoyed him, perhaps angered him. And he knew that his precise way of trying to deal with that sort of situation was to be snarky, or to simply just downgrade her to something unintelligent, and leave.
So now, his feet still jittering, blue gaze steadily at her, the furrow on his brow jumped back and forth to connect with this immature annoyance, back and forth to making himself sit in his own discomfort, and back and forth to hatching his words for her.
"But what if I have my answers already?" he asked.
She didn't strike him as unintelligent, quite the contrary. Perhaps she just thought, on good grounds, on years of experience, that she knew his type.
But he'd done his bit of research too. He knew it was hard to scrutinise yourself from your own perspective. And he decided that he was ok with her jumping to conclusions without really getting to know him first.
A thought came, then passed, that the chance was pretty good that he'd end up somewhere he'd want to be, anyway.
"What if I just came here to get the tools to handle them in a better way?"
20
« on: 12/19/2024 at 16:52 »
This time he'd arrived prodding. He'd arrived interested, wanting to unwrap layers.
He didn't know what it was that made Tigran want to answer, especially considering that he'd expertly demonstrated that he could have conversations about nothing - had he wanted to - but he appreciated it.
It made him think about the things that he had liked about being a professor, even though it had been too weighing on him to be able to do many terms in a row.
He felt that he managed to decipher the boy a little more now. He did not come accross as someone priviledged - as elevated by the resources of rich parents. Tigran came accross as someone used to putting down work to getting where he wanted - or needed - to be.
"And how does mind magic factor into this? To St. Mungo's or the Snake Pit?" Altair asked. But he was smiling now, trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together.
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