[Gift] The 11th Hour | Peace

Sometimes, being an enforcer meant standing around, being as threatening as one could be. Silent, stoic, the implicit threat of violence in being big and spiky and hard to hurt due to the thick scales all over Morn’s body.

And sometimes—most of the time, even—keeping the peace meant mediating the most inane, childish conflicts between two adults who really ought to know better, fretting all the while that people were being insensible, possibly escalating, might require him to be mean and scary instead of a kind and listening ear.

Morn would be lying—and he would lie, had anyone asked—if he said he didn’t like it. The simple fact was that it was a waste of his considerable talents to be a mediator for disputes over things like stolen recipes, fallen limbs, or building fences too close to someone else’s home.

But a rather large part of him liked being the sensible one who could calm things down before they became too stressful. To sit and pat his big clawed forepaw on the ground beside him and listen—really listen—as someone unraveled their petty problem to find the deeper root that made it a real bloody issue that made them dig in and turn nasty. He could do an awful lot of listening, and not a lot of talking, and solve a lot of problems that way.

His shadow didn’t like it, but the nasty little blighter could only throw so much of a tantrum without bringing Alder’s possible disappointment on them both. And Morn was sure to let it out to play when he could, when the situation called for, when decency ran its course.