singillatim | Raven & Wolf

It's hard to have ears for an apology when Ulfrùn's right there. In fact, Charles barely hears her in his excitement to sit down and immediately address the big hulk of fur. Surely you understand, Randvi.

"How are you doing, buddy? Staying warm?" He offers out a mittened hand for sniffing, and keeps grinning through the resulting snuffles. Only then does he look up at Randvi, a bit sheepish about the excited display. "Don't mean to ignore you. But-" Dog. "'M sure you understand."

Come on, what could help an unsettled mood more than a raucous teenager absolutely commandeering your pet right in front of you? Even better, they smell about the same.

Ulfrùn is so pleased that she isn't working right now, and can sniff and jump up on the boy addressing her in such a friendly way.

The display does seem to break Randvi from her melancholy at least a little. “She does have that effect on people. Charles, was it?”

To her it's a foreign name and she pronounces it a bit carefully.

He pretends to topple over quite theatrically, letting Ulfrùn knock him down to her level, and sets about giving her ears a good scratch. Getting to pal around with a dog is still something a bit novel to Charles, given that he got sixteen years of never being allowed a pet, followed by more than thirty of putting them on edge with his ghostly presence. Ulfrùn is the first one he's gotten to pet with living, human hands in a long time.

He gives a little nod of confirmation. "And Randvi, yeah?" Then, after a beat to let her confirm, "What you got there?"

A little nod to the bear claw, which has quickly caught his eye in the firelight.

Oh, now Charles is in perfect face-licking range! Ulfrùn is having a great time, tail wagging madly.

Randvi holds out the cord with the claw attached, watching it in the light.

“The bear spirit that has been haunting this town is dead.”

Oh, and the face-licking is glorious! Charles' laugh is one not often heard from him in Milton - bright and unhindered, nothing shoved beneath it or masked. He lies flat on the floor, bested by the assault, and replies to Randvi between gasps of breath.

"Didn't think you could really kill a spirit." It's really a matter of semantics. You can certainly destroy one, in all sorts of nasty ways. "That's sort of our thing!"

But before any truth behind his joke can be dwelled on, he barrels forward, sitting up on his elbows just a bit. "Bit underwhelming, to look at. I thought it'd be... bigger, maybe?"

The laugh makes Randvi smile, despite the grim topic. Ulfrùn takes full advantage while she can.

“That was the case with the entire battle, I think. This bear has harmed so many of us, but its true feud was with Young Bill’s ancestors. They felled one another and five of these remained.”

It really is too bad, they could have used the bear meat.

Good thing she keeps that thought to herself - Charles still isn't sure how he feels about all the different animals they eat here. Back home, it was mostly cows, chickens, and the occasional lamb.

"Wish I could've helped more. Back home, fighting was my thing, yeah?" He lays back, one hand behind his head and the other petting at Ulfrùn. "My partner was the brains, and I was the brawn. Just a bit harder here, without my usual tricks."

Which, sure, sometimes amounted to getting his ass kicked as long as it took for his partner to fire off the right spell, but mostly consisted of whacking at things indiscriminately with his magic bat.

Edited 2025-05-05 14:13 (UTC)

“It was a strange battle. We kept the beast at bay, but would likely have succumbed eventually had Young Bill not been present.”

As irritated as she had often been with the man, she's relieved that he had been with them when the attack had happened.

“What sort of tricks did you use?”

He can't deny being a bit of a braggart by nature, and maybe in other company he'd really be laying it on. But showing off feels a bit silly when Randvi could probably beat any weapon he's wielded with just her little finger.

"My bat's charmed. Hits about ten times harder, and it can't break." At least, it hasn't for the last three decades. A few more hours back in canon and he'll realize that's very much not the case. "And I couldn't really get hurt, or tired. Not like here. Not in the same ways, like getting whacked in the head back last year." He taps his skull, where he'd probably still have a scar if it wasn't for Kate.

“I see.” Magic isn't quite the sort of trick that she’d been expecting. “It must be convenient to have such a weapon.”

Randvi spends quite a bit of time maintaining her weapons, even here.

“You were hit here? By the Forest Talkers?”

That had been a difficult time.

"Didn't see who did it, really."

And he certainly can't remember. It wasn't his first concussion, but it was by and far the worst non-fatal injury he's ever gotten.

"It was back in September. I was just trying to help out, and then-" A hand gesture, like a club coming down. "Woke up bleeding all over the place, talking nonsense. Bit embarrassing, to be honest. Don't get knocked over the head unless you're looking to spill your life story on a total stranger."

“This place will find ways to make you do that regardless.” How many of Randvi’s friends had been confronted by her brash teenaged self, spilling her secrets?

“But head injuries are no joke. A difficult introduction. Many people seem to have lost abilities here.”

Charles considers himself a bit lucky, to be honest. It's not like he had some great superpowers that he was stripped of. He never would have called them abilities to begin with. More like symptoms of being the way he is. Useful as they can be as a detective, he'd rather be alive and not have them at all.

"I still got a couple, sort of," he says with a shrug. He reaches back down to press his palm against Ulfrùn's big, wet nose as a distraction. "Don't need to eat or sleep as much as everyone else. And if I get all riled up I get kind of- less solid. Not really helpful. It's like this place tried to give me a body but didn't quite get it right."

“Less solid,” Randvi repeats. What a strange thing. “Unfortunate then that you were not upset when you were struck.”

They may have been quite surprised when their club had passed right through his head.

Ulfrùn licks the boy’s hand. She is loving all of this attention!

He gives a little chuckle. That's something he's definitely considered. Maybe he should have someone follow him around and freak him out when danger strikes.

"I didn't think to be scared, I guess," he admits, knowing it sounds naïve. "Thirty-five years of not being able to be killed, and you sort of lose your sense of danger, at first."

“It's not uncommon in battle either way.” If people got too frightened prior to raids no one would ever go. “You have been fighting for so long?”

He does not look like he's been fighting for thirty-five years.

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