“I worry for your poor mother,” he chimed, his tone embellished with such banter set only for Lucian; a coy sense swathing every syllable. “— Sigils? They sound bloody extreme to me, but what the hell do I know about introductory magic and the like. I’m sure there’s levels I could have never even dreamed about nor heard of. Though, I’ll admit,” hues flickered up in matched roguery to his perpetual grin, “I’m relentlessly intrigued. Is it possible to teach a magic dud like myself the rules of magic?” Eyes wandered in tandem to the notebook that Lucian had glanced at, soon walking over as digits near tenderly traced any visible scripture that remained, brows knit in enamored perplexity. “Soundproof the place.” It rolled off his tongue as more of a statement than a plausible inquiry, glancing up from the scribbled sigils as he watched each movement from the witch near attentively, “I’m not sure what you think I’m up to in my spare time.” Tongue rolled to coat his bottom lip, breaking out into a near diffident smile, eyes permeating with more redolent fumes.
“I grew them back.” His tone was purposefully coy but it didn’t last. This kind of thing was always going to be exciting, introducing magic to people for the first time. But Mal had used the phrase ‘introductory to magic’ specifically and...There was a lot he could teach him. A lot he wanted to teach him. Both to show off and bring him a bit more up to speed on what was happening around him.
But mostly…
Straightening up a bit and nodding towards the pages, he tried to ignore the sheer giddiness in his gut and focus on explaining. “Sigils and stuff and pretty introductory, actually. They’re all made up of runes which are pretty much the ABC’s of magic. How you arrange them is how you give them power. But I mean, if you’re me, they also have to look as aesthetically pleasing as possible.” Reaching to flip back a couple of pages, a wry grin pulling at the corners of his lips, Lucian gestured to a progression of symbols. All the same, just arranged differently near underlined labels of rooms in his apartment. Everything was done in pen, the ink aged and etched into the page portraying bulkier, almost harder to make out symbols, versus the fresh ones that were cleaner. The difference between eighteen and twenty-four. “I mean, you normally can’t see them anyways, but it’s a matter of pride.” He was only half joking, eyes leaving the page to glance up at Mal before flipping a few more pages.
The notes were messy, half printed, half cursive scribbles in Latin marked under certain rooms. He pointed at one in particular under ‘Bedroom’. “And yes, soundproof the place.” His tone was particularly matter-of-fact despite his slight smirk. “You want your neighbors to listen to whatever shenanigans you get up to at 3AM?”