[Really not a fan of waking up naked and wet. To find oneself in one moment in a castle in the middle of nowhere, stubbornly ignoring the chill of evening to finish reading a book before having to go shut a window, and then— wet, and naked, and considerably warmer than before is more jarring than he'd like to repeat ever again. He doesn't remember being a squid; he remembers only waking briefly to look down at himself to see tentacles where limbs should be, passing out again, and waking up whole some time later.

So that's great. He turns over and coughs seawater onto the sand, and waves away all approaching Wakers by virtue of not trusting like that, not again, no thanks. One of them leaves a bag nearby and it's his bag, of course it is, and so he's at least able to get dressed.

Almost. Once dressed he makes his way up the beach, not quite into the thick of things on the boardwalk - lot of people there, mm - where he stops to dig through the rest of this bag. He addresses his omen (cw undead puppy), which, well. Don't talk shit about the omen, but he addresses it:]

No shoes again. We're unlucky, aren't we, Cezar?

[Like any perfectly normal dog, Cezar barks and wags at him. For sure.]

[Of course, it's too many people in one place for Hector to like it, just as he suspected. But a man gets hungry, and if the food is free, his stomach wins out over his good sense.

Still, it's— overwhelming? For a man who's spent most of his life alone or in extremely limited company (or, like, high stakes danger company, with vampires), a boardwalk festival is the kind of thing he's often sneered at resentfully from afar and never dared to actually approach. He's only barely approaching now, standing somewhat removed from the various games and stalls, close enough to watch and to listen but not enough that someone might, good god, think he wanted to play ring toss.

He is also eating a cupcake, which is a remarkable creation. If he's approached by a fellow Sleeper he regards them with, hm, a modicum of distrust, but it's offset by the relief of what he considers to be a fellow outsider. Or at least not someone trying to get him to play fucking ring toss.]

What's the catch, do you think? There's bound to be one with this much cheer in the air. Someone handed me this confection and apologized, and I still haven't figured that one out.

[Whether or not he has located some shoes yet is dealer's choice.]

[See Hector on the sand. See the mangled form of some sea beast or another at his feet, all badly-arranged limbs and awful teeth and slick with seawater and blood. Someone has been here, to take care of this, and it isn't Hector - he appears to be unarmed, just looking down at the creature, a little... sad? Hoo boy.

He crouches down next to it and fishes from his bag a pair of odd coins, which he proceeds to strike together a few times. Each hit produces a bright blue spark that skitters over the corpse of the beast a bit further, a bit further— until the one unmangled eye the thing retains suddenly stutters back to life with the same bright blue glow. The thing fumbles itself back upright, notably not healed— the hanging bits of flesh and open wounds don't change, but the beast is up and about again and fixed on Hector.

Hector, who tucks the coins away and reaches up to touch the beast's head where it's not... not there, looking at it with a kind of bittersweet fondness, up until he twists and retches on the sand. Not even the revival process can make these things less bad to look at, but the beast continues just to linger there, making a few unpleasantly wet sounds with what remains of its throat. Hector waves a hand at it, wiping his mouth.]

Go and deal with the others, [he says, and lo, there goes this undead beast, lumbering back into the shallows to immediately attack the next thing trying to get onto the beach. Hector looks at anyone who might have come to fight monsters and instead witnessed this, and hastily holds up his hands— though he's just vommed on the ground and is a little shaky for it, so he's not much of an intimidating figure.]

Hold— please. It- it listens to me, it won't harm anything else.

[whatever you want baby hmu]