Robert
"Well, real or not, they're still my mom and dad." He chuckled, bright amber eyes turning aside as fond memories of them filled his mind, a bright, sincere smile crossing his lips. He couldn't help but wonder how they were doing now, without him. The boy should probably write a letter...

Shaking his head to clear the thoughts out, however, Edwin carefully listened to River's words as she spoke. As the question rode out on the quiet air between them, his smile widened, as another important person of his past came to the forefront. "Ah, I don't know if the Hydra's... Uhh It's just that what I can do... Grow back things, pop snake heads out of my skin..."

To demonstrate, he took the finger from before, and raised it, the finger morphing into a little snake and wiggling before returning to the form of his digit. "...And having breath that can almost knock someone out, as well as my last name... Well, the way my friend put it..."

He put a hand on his chest, "*Yours truly* Might just be that very Hydra... Or at least an incarnation of it."

A beat.

"...I *Can* Totally roll over if you'd like me to, though I'm not exactly keen on being a pet."
Charles
◆ "True." She smiled, her eyes crinkling a bit at the corners as they always did. "And that's all you could wish for, right? Acceptance, love, support... Unless you're actually really unlucky and they hate you? I dunno. Just covering all my bases."

□ Letting out an awkward chuckle, she finally took a seat, gently lowering herself to the ground below and crossing her legs at the ankles. Shivering lightly as her butt hit the cold damp ground, she also found this chill to be oddly invigorating, almost like a swim back home in a river in October. Whatever the case, she looked over at Edwin, leaning in lightly and nodding as he spoke. As he turned his finger *Back* Into a snake she couldn't help but let out a soft *Ooh,* Mostly because the guy had just turned his finger into a frigging snake.

▪︎ And then the conversation turned back on her. 

◆ "Oohkay, gotcha. That's pretty cool though, dude!... Even if it's a bit freaky to look at." She felt bad for commenting on it like that, but she couldn't pull the words back to her mouth and purge the memory from Edwin's mind, so... "Anyways, you're a living Hydra? Dude, that's awesome! Also, jeez, don't actually roll over! It was just a joke, that'd actually be pretty dehumanizing, and magic already kinda turns us into spectacles in the eyes of society as a whole, so we weirdos gotta stick together." She'd smile, before letting out a sigh. "I can see auras. The past and the future and its side effects. All that. It's honestly still wild to me, but hey, I guess I'm in some way a mythological person too; seems like the Oracle at Delphi was in the same boat as me, just... Way less dorky."
Robert
"It's... Okay. M'not always in control, though. Sometimes I panic and a bunch of them come out to 'defend' me and I have to explain why they're not venomous... And that the other person might just be hallucinating snakes coming out of people. They don't do that normally, after all." He chuckled, remembering all the time spent experimenting with his strange powers at home. "There's a lot of kinks that still have to be worked out... So sometimes it feels like I'm not exactly... Entirely in control of my body?"

Edwin lays his back against the grass and sighs. "It suuuuuuuucks."

"Though being able to see auras and stuff... Can you turn that off? Because if not, I can imagine it sucks just as much as me, if not more." He says, turning aside to face River. "Man, I imagine being an Oracle sucks in general, though. Skyla always used to talk about how terrible it was knowing your own future... She was a bit of a classical myth fanatic too. Cassandra was one of her favorite figures."

"...You don't have it *That* Bad though, do you?"