Mephistopheles was a creature of means. He was industrious, cunning, and above all, persuasive. From the moment he appeared, wearing the skin of a shuck, and followed Dr. Johannes Faust into his study, there was no going back. Indeed, the deal was done long before the wily creature had ever made eye contact with the doctor. He stood before Johannes now, in the veneer of human maleness, a tall man with wide and opaque eyes. There was little readable sensibility or sensitivity within them and they reflected no apparent mood. To Johannes, it was almost as if his little familiar had deliberately taken the form of a man of intelligence to mock him. He bat his pretty lashes and grinned widely at Johannes and bowed dramatically.
"Well then? " Johannes asked hurriedly...
"Is it done? You gave her the present?"
Mephisto giggled, a tinkly little sound that smacked of something otherworldly.
"Do not mock me, you animal."
"Oh calm yourself. All in due time, my lad. Yes, yes, I have handed the gift over. Pretty little thing it was, and your girl isn't half bad herself. "
Johannes sighed loudly, the tension in his body leaving one moment, but returning just as strongly. He squinted, scrunching the fine features of his face in thought.
"How long will it take?"
"Like I said, all in due time. The world beyond works as it will. We are at the mercy of Fate and God now."
"Don't speak to me of God, Mephisto."
"You'll soon be calling me your dear, sweet Mephisto, once the full moon of the month sinks below the horizon. Then, and only then will our little trinket's magic have its spell fully cast. First she has to wear it, for it bears a stone that must meet with the flesh of her breast."
"You speak in riddles you know."
"Maybe. But that's why you called me is it not? To learn. To quench your mind's never ending thirst? "
It was all well and surely done now, wasn't it? Johannes pondered the man before him before answering. He felt the gnawing ache of it every minute of the day. Sunlight had begun to irritate him, and moonlight even worse. He'd been old and retired from working directly with the patients of the city. He spent most of his hours when he wasn't lecturing(and God what a drudge that had become) locked away in his study, staring wanly at the dog-eared and frayed edges of old textbooks. Worthless dross it all was. Just mindless chaff written to massage the egos of privileged men. It meant nothing. He'd been a doctor like his father and apprenticed in the same schools of logic and medicine but when the great sickness had struck, he'd realised that it was in vain. Their potions and serums, poultices and salves had no basis to them and more patients had likely died of poisoning by doctor, than of the plague itself. Johannes had quit tending patients and retreated to the cold comfort of books and lecture halls then but it all seemed a wasted effort now.
