multiversallogs | closed ; he is always exiled as it were an outlaw.

Who: Lucius Malfoy (Sr)
What: The search of discovery uncovers something else. Almost.
Where: The Fog.
When: Coardi morning, the 5th of Velldaren.

In what might be, to some, a completely random patch of Fog, something dressed in tailored black drops out of the sky at a hawk's angled swoop.

The rigid bristles of the broomstick turn aside, scraping the ground in killed momentum. Lucius Malfoy keeps his balance in landing with the skill of someone who is not necessarily naturally agile, but has flown these things plenty of times, and he rarely does anything he isn't good at plenty of times. The item itself wouldn't give anyone the impression of being a tool for cleaning -- it is as tall as his shoulder, solid oak, an attached compass spinning a little wild before settling. He doesn't consult it, now, his wand sans cane taken from a deep pocket of his remarkably practical cloak and held up. Freshly trimmed blonde locks cling like sea tendrils against the slightly damp black wool at his back.

It's very quiet, out here. A part of him likes it, foolishly -- or at least, until the sicknesses set in, start to nag at his thoughts, but goodness, isn't that all the time?

His wand lifts out of his hand, hovering, and slowly turning as if caught in slow and lazy whirlpool. There is a list and gravity to it that he watches for as long as it takes for it to have meaning to him, before snagging it handle first out of the air and pointing for the ground, with all the efficiency of someone who doesn't want to be caught here, grounded. There's a flare of red light, inking through dense fog, and it marks the rocky terrain, a fading beacon for future reference. The wand is pocketed, compass consulted, and he kicks the broomstick back into position to take flight once again.

Except he pauses. There is no sound, out here, and what snags his attention is only like sound -- deep and too low to hear, a vibrato that tremors through the rock beneath his feet, up his bones. Beside him, the marker-charm slowly wans, reducing everything back to black and pale grey, and Lucius turns towards where he senses the source of--

Was it a growl?

Ill-equipped to do much monster fighting in earnest, Lucius simply readies his wand again for peace of mind, broom heavy in the other hand, and paces nearer. There are no clues, no indications of life, and he wonders if he's chasing his own paranoia by the time he does see it. It's barely a shape, impossible to make out clearly in the thick fog, and it stands at a distance enough that one would feel quite safe. What strikes him is what he can tell of its posture. It appears to be watching him. To have been.

But a few blinks has its shape fading from definition, leaving behind a dark smear in the distance, a trickle of cold seemingly gotten into Lucius' blood stream, and he loosens his hand on the silver snake-head of his wand when he realises only after the fact that he's gone white-knuckled. Memory grasps after what he just saw, and superstition fills in the rest. Hearing a sudden and forlorn howl would be appropriate, at this point, but Lucius is quite alone.

He thinks.

The jury is still out, anyway, as he takes to the skies.