Oystercatcher Tide Pools A man with intent on his face

His words were met with a grinning man, teeth hued by the smitten bird all the way to the gumbase, a ragabond ruffian who’s silent aura simply existed. A simple creature who kept something that he wasn’t meant to touch just yet, veiled. This mount was no intricate safe, but a lockbox, seemingly rustless despite the wind revealing a plethora of scars over that mountainous body. 

‘That makes two of us’ his mind mulled over the scars, memorizing the different patches where they lay without him even needing to remember such a thing. His own back, though much more proportional to his athletic body than the topheavy company, bore its own patchwork of history in grim bands of greyed scar tissue. A forever reminder of how closely death watched him and grew ill with intent. 

Crystals stayed to the amberesque flames that bore into him, and he was unfazed by the ease of which this man could crush him. He was an ex-assassin; surely he could find some way out of it, some range to widdle the foe down and slay him. 
But he couldn’t think such thoughts now...for this company was no foe. In fact, he felt almost as close as kin, a near brother, a familiar, or even a Shadow Fang as he once had been. 

The man licked his jowls, a meaty slurp carelessly slurring birdmeat And blood clots across a reddened muzzle. 
Clearly he needed more, to give this man somewhere worthwhile to reside. Was it his kindness that began to debilitate him so?

The reminder of his home, the woods he fought hard to forge into a housing for a plenty brought back the burden, the memory of his wife and her impregnation, the other two, three, four! females whom too were afflicted with being with child. It was a taxing thing on the Keep’s Watcher, And with him hearing Phex and her injury, his imbitterment began to revisit. That fucking lynx, a nuisance who had robbed him. Morgan had assured him that the cat had been chased off, that Phex was tending to herself, well and Gwen being protected and pushed away before she too became maimed. 

Had that fucking cat touched his wife, he would invent fire,

and burn these woods to the ground with that fucking cat in them, alone, scared, pregnant, hurt, and tormented.

His eyes glazed over, a storm brewing a fierce wintry avalanche that swore to engulf legions, alone. But that was neither here, nor now, he gathered to himself. It was nothing. It hadn’t happened. Gwen was fine. 

Taking a deep breath, he blinked, bringing his full attention to the hidden devil before him. “Come, please, enjoy my home. Fill yourself, and live free...” his words caught in his throat, and he couldn’t exactly figure out why. What had ceased in him? Or rather...

What plagued him, now?