Canto VIII
"I suppose by twigs, he meant branches," Luna said, landing on all fours but springing up again like a cat.
He could not tell what she meant by that; she was a sphinx and he was not Oedipus.
She cast a delicate charm over the bodies she had collected, covering them with a beautiful illuminated cloak of light to make them easy to see in the darkness, then waited for him to appear ready to go back with her. As if he ever would be ready to go back to Hogwarts.
"I don't want to return to the castle," he said, sounding more like a petulant child than he wished.
"Then I think I'll stay with you, to keep you company. This forest, while beautiful, is lonely."
He resented it very much that he could not tell whether she was saying such a thing just to manipulate him or if she truly was acting with his best interests at heart.
As if reading his mind, she stepped close to him and pressed her hand into his for a brief moment, and the resulting euphoria, combined with the deep despondency that overwhelmed him when she moved away, further confirmed his bewilderment.
He felt no need except that of following her as she gestured for him to come along, gaily beginning to wend her way out of the forest. The pangs of compulsion to touch her, to usurp her life-energy, were growing within him, which left him feeling more bitter and isolated as he realized the depth and breadth of the post-mortal chill within his soul.
Being a man of some conscience, by principle he would not allow himself to steal from her, though it drove him mad that such a source of warmth and solace was so close.
He felt so hollow, and as he looked at her walking-nay, she was skipping-ahead of him, all he could think of was how warm and vibrant she appeared.
This is how people become possessed by malevolent ghosts, he decided, ghosts who are unable to resist the infinite craving for life. It is right to exorcise such a parasitic coward, who feeds himself on delusions.
While he had just recently experienced his first taste of the forbidden fruit from the tree of life, the lingering poison still tainted his veins from his ancestors' taste of the apple from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Thus he judged, without realizing his words were mostly interjectory and for his own moral benefit.
With understanding the source of wretchedness that came from being the imprint of a departed soul, he felt the grave certainty that he was supposed to feel wretched, a knowledge not unusual to him. His customary response to this was to scream at the gods to give him more weight to bear.
But as they walked, Luna asked him for his thoughts, and he voiced them with carefully-chosen words that, he noticed in retrospect, were misrepresentively less dark.
"I am thinking that this existence is very different from that of being alive."