The Sentinels if you are the dealer, i'm out of the game

"the one and only." arturo responds in a smoky murmur, a ghost of a smirk curling the edges of his lips upwards. it does not touch his eyes and is not as half as mischievous as it once might've been. there was a lot that wasn't the same. the world was a bleaker place without lotte's light in it. colors faded like an old photograph and the fearghal monarch wondered how long it would be before he stopped seeing colors period. he misses his nightingale in the very depths of his soul and try as he might to move on, to push him to keep enduring and to keep surviving he knows that her death is an irreversible severing of himself. as hard as he tried to convince himself that this journey was a good idea even up to the past few minutes he knows it wasn't. he shouldn't have come here. he sees her ghost in the trees, burnt and hacking up the smoke and ash she'd inhaled. she'd been in pain and clinging to life when he found her and he cringes internally, looking to the boy as if he hoped smokestep would act as a tether between the present and relived memories.

it takes all of arturo's self restraint not to visibly cringe as smokestep mentions that he was skellige's witchdoctor. given the longevity and the fact that arturo can remember the last episode being known as witchdoctor is no longer a compliment as it'd first been. "that's right." the gangster responds. nevertheless, he's been the witchdoctor and there was no sense in pretending otherwise. pretending, the coywolf feels, would not solve anything. arturo doesn't ask whether or not what skellige had told his son was good or bad ....it seemed a bit obvious which was which given that the boy didn't greet him with any sort of hostility or malice. "do you seek to rebuild blackrock depths or are you starting over with something fresh?" arturo inquires, gesturing towards the bay with a slim muzzle, hoping to gently guide the subject away from the witchdoctor.