Tevinter, several days after his confrontation with the bear, had yet to return to Jade Fern Grove, still trying to figure out what he was going to tell his parents, whom would no doubt notice the three slash wounds across his muzzle even if he alternated between letting them uncovered (as he had them now), and leaving them covered with his extremely basic (albeit helpful) knowledge of healing. Healing was Swift's forte but Tevinter knew just enough to keep himself from getting an infection or potentially dying. Avoiding death was something that Tevinter was surprisingly good at, even though three times now he should have been little more than a decaying corpse. There were those that would claim he was blessed (by what, he wondered?) but in truth Tevinter knew that it was more than likely just a long running streak of extremely good luck. 

Tevinter figured that while he had left on the guise of going on an outrider mission he might as well stick to his word and actually gather what information he could. Scope out the Southern parts of the Teekon Wilds for his father and aunt who respectively led the Grove. Still, he would have to think of something to explain his new ...trophies, because he didn't think admitting that he had provoked a grizzly bear would go over too well. It could have cost him his life. He knew this — had known it prior but he'd wanted vengeance, so fixated upon being the hero that he'd allowed pride and greed to consume him. Yet, it was not death that Tevinter feared. It was losing those that he cared about, his family.

He had lost one already. Both in the physical sense and in his memories. No more could he recall faces, voices, or even really names. He'd been too young, and as he began to see Scimitar and Bazi and their litter as his family even more of his biological family had begun to fade until they seemed like a dream. Like they had not existed in the first place and he'd always been Scimitar and Bazi's, instead of their adopted son. His steps slowed as he drew nearer to scent borders, conscious of them, though he took a moment to pause and study the towering peak. It's tip stretched up to the heavens, grasping towards the clear night sky littered with stars, towards the moon in all of her glory. 

After he'd gotten his aesthetic fill he moved closer, though left more than an acceptable distance between their borders and himself, knowing that at the doorstep of another pack respect was always to be given. Tevinter's howl rose into the sky, alerting the Moonspear's wolves to his diplomatic presence; though admittedly diplomat was a bit of a stretch. He was more or less just a curious Outrider eager to appease the Grove's leadership and earn his apprenticeship.

Tevinter supposed that he understood Floki's confusion, for in many ways it mirrored his own. Only, their circumstances of what bore their individual confusion were quite different. Floki, and the other, whose name Tevinter could still not draw to the forefront of his mind (or perhaps didn't want to) did not understand that he wasn't the same. Because of what he suffered, and in part because of how Scimitar and Bazi had raised him. They had played their own part in shaping him into Tevinter, in giving him direction and a family. He owed them everything for there had been nothing that had said the Frostfur's had to take him in. With four mouths to feed of their own they hadn't needed a fifth ...and yet they had done it anyway. “I can't really explain it,” Tevinter concluded that they could not understand because they hadn't suffered as he had. They had not been (as far as he was aware, anyway) at death's doorstep twice (well actually three times now but the third was wholly his own doing but that was entirely besides the point). “I am called Tevinter now, sometimes I use the alias Kjalarr,” but it's significance to their supposed bloodline and his viking heritage was not to his knowledge.

“I have shed Jorunn because...it's not who I am anymore. The incident it...I washed up on a shore and walked for so long until my paws hurt and my stomach hurt,” Because he'd been able to hunt small rodents but nothing of true substantial. “I was taken in by Scimitar and Bazi Frostfur,” For the sake of not wanting to sound entirely insensitive he did not outright call them family; and yet they were. “They raised me as one of their own even though they had four kids already. They didn't have too but they did, and I don't know I felt for a long time that the name Jorunn had lost it's meaning to me.” Perhaps that was insensitive, but at the same time Tevinter could barely wrap his mind around his own emotions, let alone try to cushion theirs.

“Is that why no one looked for me? Why no one asked around at the packs? Because you all assumed I was dead?” For a moment, Tevinter was angry. He wasn't sure which option he found worse: thinking they hadn't really cared about him at the first place, or that they would sooner label him dead then bother to send wolves to search for him; and regardless it had hurt. Scimitar had sent the entire pack after Bazi, Allure and Swift. For them he would have torn the world apart, Tevinter did not doubt. Perhaps these comparisons were not fair of him to draw, and yet Tevinter could not help it.

“I'm not...I'm not the same, small child I was. I'm not the child you knew.” Of course he wasn't. He was nearly a “man” now; and five months was a long time to be away from his biological family. A family that he acknowledged, as when he allowed the older male — his brother — to close the distance and give him an affectionate bump against his neck. Did they truly want that heathen to resurface? Arrogant? Rebellious (perhaps even disrespectful)? The Jarl's son that fancied himself as some sort of heir to a throne of blood and bone? Those tendencies might still linger in moderation but even so Jorunn was not who he wanted to be seen as; even if, in theory, he would give into the call of his blood he did not want his Ragnar's legacy. He wanted his own. “This isn't this place I...we were born,” Tevinter corrected himself to include Floki, the unspoken question apparent in the words he did speak.

Tevinter could not help the bristle of his hackles, at Charon calling him a coward. For being a child. Terrified. It was a cruel thing to call Tevinter, like calling a small, niave child who was afraid of the monsters in his closet a coward. It wasn't something that someone did. Typically, an older brother would open up the closet door to prove that there was nothing there and nothing to be frightened of. That kind of sympathy was not afforded towards Tevinter by Charon, who claimed to be his older brother. Some older brother, and this annoyance was only strengthened when Charon then threw his own 'pity me' story out there, as if their situations were even related. Charon might have seen a bear kill his mother but he hadn't been the one in the position of his mother. To be the one the bear wanted to eat (for it was lucky that Tevinter had gotten away)? And...it did not help that Tevinter's eye sight was not “normal”, but for the sake of avoiding further ridicule he kept his muzzle clamped shut, tightly; and not without struggle.

Charon then threw out a name (Tevinter supposed that was what his last name was/had been) and added that he wasn't one because he was a coward, because he a small, defenseless child had abandoned his family because of his fear. Tevinter did not see it as abandoning. He saw it was self preservation. It was not that he did not want the comfort of his mother, or the presence of his siblings but that he'd been so traumatized, confident that the bear would find him and kill him even with them between it and him. The boy Charon recalled was not the boy that Tevinter remembered being. Perhaps he'd loved his family, but he'd snap at his siblings in attempt to keep the food for himself, he lorded himself over them, even his own mother. He was a little asshole. “I'm no coward,” Tevinter ground out, inclining his muzzle, though the fresh wounds were visible enough. A coward would not have picked a fight with a slumbering grizzly. Perhaps he was a bit of a reckless idiot but he was no coward. “I have conquered my fears.” Because that was what he was at his heart: a conqueror.

“You of all people should understand my situation, on the account of the bear and the family that went out of their way to take care of you. The adults that took you in, helpless and young as you were. They could have turned you out, could have left you to die,” And, honestly, that wasn't too much of a stretch to Vikings who sometimes left their own children to the Wilds to die. “but they didn't, just as Scimitar and Bazi didn't.” Yet, he was just repeating himself over and over, knowing that it was futile.

When Floki piped up that he was an Outrider too, Tevinter felt a small smile tug at the corner's of his lips. “Maybe we could go on some missions together?” Because despite the current tension between Charon and him Tevinter hoped to rekindle the relationship he'd once had with his twin. The plea, the offer Charon made, seemed to Tevinter to make no sense given his recent spew of insults and bitterness. In truth, Charon himself had given Tevinter no reason to want to join but he spared a glance at his twin and felt a decision rise like a lead weight in his heart. “If you would have me, I would work on trying to re-learn what I have lost of who I am.” He would say goodbye to Scimitar and Bazi. He owed them that much; providing Charon's (still bizarre) offer even continued to stand.