Stavanger Bay may we all die twice

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Unfortunately for the child she stands out against the warm tan of the sand, against the swell of the tide a little further away, though it is the small white furls of her breath that escapes her that initially draws the gangster’s attention. His heart beat is loud in his ears, a soft tremble of his whiskers as emotion lumps in his throat and briefly causes it to constrict so that he draws in an unsteady breath. Her fur is a reddish color, accented with cream with the same rib cage marks that had donned Skellige and he wonders. She is Cairn of that there is no doubt and he can't remember if Szymon bore the same markings as his brother or not. Thus Arturo is left to assume that she is Skellige’s daughter. She is young, he sees. Clearly too young to take care of herself and much too young to be left alone. In his mind’s eye Arturo looks at her and sees his daughters when they were her age. Despite the fact that he was, seconds ago, thinking of the grim threat he’d issued to Dakarai and Olive about their children’s lives his fiery red-orange gaze settles upon the Cairn girl and he knows that he cannot and will not (lest he is given a reason why) leave her here. The softness in the blazing fire of his eyes is nothing short of fatherly because for everything that is bad within Arturo Fearghal his love for children is easily the purest. It is his one good quality, perhaps his only redeeming trait.

It breaks his heart to look at her, as if she is trying to hide from him. “It is alright sweet child,” Arturo murmurs to her, his smoky timbre soft: a tone he’d used on his own children many times, a tone that his children with Lotte would come to know well. He is slow to lower himself to the sand underfoot — and finds that it is as chilly as the dirt of the earth — as he looks her over with a careful, observant eye from the distance that is between them looking for signs of malnutrition or injury. The gangster is relieved that he (currently) see signs of neither. “I won’t hurt you,” He promises her, settling into a sphinx-like position in the sand conscious not to make movements that were too fast: as if she were an beast easily spooked and he feared causing her to flee. “I am Arturo,” He introduces himself to her in the same soft voice he has adopted with no effort at all. “—or Turo, if it is easier.” He adds after a small pause, remembering how Chusi had struggled with his name for a while. “What is your name?” He inquires with a soft cant of his head, unsure if she could speak…or if she would even indulge him at all. Nevertheless he is patient and tries to make himself as non threatening as he possibly can hoping that he can coax her out of her shell if only a little bit.

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