[open] safe in the dark

[thenotsofair]

He isn't fully healed. Not entirely. His dreams are still fragmented, red and terrible. He still feels a little tug under his heart every time he thinks he sees the Dog out of the corner of his eye. He still can't forgive Curufin, not quite. He still can't face Findarato, still twitches when he hears the wolves outside, and the scars will never go

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[surfaceshine]

Dean would give anything, anything at all, to be moved along the same road that Celegorm seems to have enjoyed; the hunter has been backsliding for a long time, maybe all his life, and any steps he makes forward seem to be so tenuous and fragile that they don't matter at all the next time something hits him remotely hard. He'd been doing better with his drinking, staying busy with construction and new arrivals and the odd, unsettling business of maintaining relationships without the advantage of just killing something to say you're important to me; but then the murders and all the strangeness surrounding them, strangeness Dean thinks he recognizes, had the effect of both catapulting him leagues closer to his brother again, while tearing him down further than ever inside his own head

[thenotsofair]

Tyelko lowers the weapon when he hears someone call. The dog next to him lifts his head and pricks his ears, but when Tyelko glances at him and says a single word, settles again, resting his head on his paws. He's a rangy, brindled hound, built for speed. (Cleeg likes his dogs. Like, a lot.)

(Also, this one could probably qualify as a serial killer by some rules, though war is probably a different category.)

"At this point, I probably wouldn't hit you if I was aiming," Tyelko says, without really thinking about it, self-deprecating and rueful, and then registers, oh, Edain. It's not so much that his bearing shifts as that his shoulders actually...ease. Edain are safer than Eldar, in some ways, given his reputation and history. He rolls his shoulders back and examines Dean, trying to work out if...nope, much as one Edain sometimes looks like another, doesn't think he recognizes this one.

"I don't think I know you."

[surfaceshine]

The type of dog doesn't really seem to matter; it wouldn't, after all, not after... well anyway. Dean keeps an eye on the hound anyway, even when it seems well trained and sedate, and wonders why he isn't leaving right this second anyway. His shoulders do not relax, though he notes that apparently, something about him has set the stranger at ease. Paranoia? Something else? Dean doesn't know.

There's a dog over there.

The hunter shakes his head. "Nope, don't think I know you either - I'm Dean," he replies, finally getting it together and pulling up a grin for the man. "Just out shootin' the shit with mother nature."

[thenotsofair]

Poor Dean. We really are very sorry. (It doesn't help, but Cleeg-trained dogs are pretty much better trained than any other. The boy is good with animals.) Tyelko's eyebrows tick up slightly at Dean's...terminology, but they go back down, and one corner of his mouth tugs up a little. Thinking of Caranthir, most likely. "Tyelkormo Turcafinwe," he says smoothly, with the slightest of bows and with less of the shame that he used to have about admitting that. "It's not a bad day for that, is it?"

Since it appears he is pausing in practice, he unstrings the bow.