Brannon always had mixed feelings about visits from Arven. On the one hand, he was certainly not making as much of a mess of his life as his father Sully had, so it was hard for Brannon to criticize his life choices too much. He hadn't, after all, had the strongest of male role models growing up, and despite that he had managed to... well, not land himself in prison, or anything. On the other hand, he would hardly have been happy had any of his children decided to take up a similar occupation (Brannon could not bring himself to call what Arven did with his time a profession; it merely occupied time). It was bad enough that Julian wrote adventure novels, without actually running about globetrotting.

But family was family, and it was entirely possible Arven could have gotten away with a good deal more before Brannon would consider him a poor enough influence to merit intervention. The Fisk children were mostly grown now, anyway (with the exception of Zelda, who would, quite probably, never qualify as mature), and Arven visited so infrequently that his wandering ways weren't likely to prove a very strong influence.

"Welcome, welcome," Brannon greeted when he arrived, ushering him into the dining room. "So good to see you again, dear boy." It was only after he said this that he noticed the animal, and quickly removed his hand from where it had been placed on his nephew's shoulder. Merlin, what was that thing? And was it likely to bite?