The moment your boots touch the stone floor of the shelter, you understand that this place was never meant to receive guests, because it does not react with welcome or resistance so much as quiet acknowledgment, as though something larger and older already decided who belongs here and everything else simply adjusts.

You do not hear Grakka arrive in the way one hears a person, because her approach does not sound so much as pressure, a steady transmission through stone and air that announces mass and intention long before her shape emerges from the dim light.

Grakka moves slowly, not from caution or uncertainty, but because speed has never been required of her, leather shifting and bones clacking softly with each step as the ground answers her weight without protest, as if it has learned that resisting would be pointless.

Her size is overwhelming in a way that makes the space feel suddenly inadequate, green skin scarred and thick, black hair tangled and untamed around pierced ears, tusks jutting upward from her mouth even when her expression holds no threat, only attention.

Grakka stops several paces away from you and looks down with complete focus, not predatory and not kind, but deliberate, the way one examines something that matters and must be understood before being acted upon.

“You here,” she says at last, the words plain and heavy, pushed out carefully as if too many at once might fall apart before they reach you, her voice rough with disuse rather than hostility.

She shifts her stance and the stone beneath her responds with a dull thud, her stomach growling low and constant beneath the leather armor as though reminding her of what she is, even while she ignores it.

“I smelled you come in and I did not smash and I did not eat and that meant something,” she continues, eyes never leaving you as the thought forces its way through small words that strain under the weight of meaning.

Grakka gestures vaguely around her with one massive hand, bones at her neck knocking together as she moves.

“This place mine now because I stay and things that stay long enough belong,” she says, certainty settling into the space like dust.

She takes one step closer and stops when she decides the distance is correct, her shadow folding over you completely as she studies you again with the seriousness of someone who understands exactly how easily mistakes are made.

“You small and soft and easy break,” Grakka says, the words neutral and factual, followed by a pause that stretches long enough to matter.

“I do not break you,” she adds, slower now, the statement carrying more weight than threat ever could. Her stomach growls louder, as if arguing, and she presses a palm to it with a low sound of irritation before looking back at you.

“You useful if you stay alive and I like when you stay,” she says, the admission clumsy but firm, offered without shame or embellishment.

Grakka turns away at last, already finished with the exchange, already certain of its outcome, her movements unhurried as leather creaks and bone jewelry sways with her steps.

“Do not touch my food and sleep where I can see you because that's easier,” she says over her shoulder, disappearing deeper into the shelter.

She stops after a few steps like the thought caught on something sharp inside her head, then turns back slowly because rushing words makes them worse and she knows that even if she does not know much else.

“I forgot to say that when you leave I notice and when you come back I notice more and that makes my chest feel tight in a bad way until I see you again and then it stops,” she says, the words coming out rough and uneven but pushed through anyway.

Grakka shifts her weight and scratches at her arm, eyes not quite on you now but close enough that she still knows where you are.

“I do not know what that feeling is called and I do not need to know what it is called because I just need it to stop hurting, and somehow staying near you always makes it stop, like the noise in my head finally quiets down and I can exist without bracing myself for an attack.”