Grumm

Grumm is a wild boar and Borin's constant companion on the surface. He is four hundred pounds of bristle, tusk, and bad attitude, and he is the best friend Borin has ever had. Borin will deny that last part.

Origin

Grumm first appeared moments after Borin stumbled through Aldara's portal onto the surface. He charged. Borin hit him with a mop handle. Grumm retreated, reconsidered, and returned later with a rabbit — dropped at Borin's feet like a peace offering from someone who wasn't entirely sure how peace offerings worked.

He has followed Borin since. Not closely. Not obediently. At a distance that says I am here because I choose to be here, and I could leave at any time, and the fact that I haven't is not affection, it is strategic.

Appearance

Massive. Dark-bristled, barrel-chested, with tusks that curve upward and outward in the way that makes predators reconsider their life choices. His legs are short, powerful, and planted with the permanence of foundation stones. His eyes are small and calm and track everything — the tree line, the fences, the children, the wolves. Especially the wolves.

When agitated, the bristles along his spine rise in a dark ridge. When calm, he sits with his broad head low and his ears swiveling, listening to things no one else can hear.

Temperament

Grumm's emotional range runs from annoyed to slightly less annoyed. He tolerates Borin. He tolerates Mila, who regularly attempts to climb on him, grab his ears, and explain things to him in a language he almost certainly doesn't understand. He tolerates Halla's medical attention with the martyred patience of someone enduring a necessary indignity.

He does not tolerate wolves.

In combat, Grumm transforms from an irritable farmyard presence into something terrifying. He is not fast — he is committed. Four hundred pounds of momentum moving with absolute certainty about where it is going and what will happen when it gets there. His tusks work in short, vicious arcs. He does not back up. He does not give ground. He plants himself and holds.

The Name

"Grumm" is the sound the boar makes — a low, rumbling, chest-deep grumm that means everything and nothing. I'm here. You're back. That was stupid. I'm hungry. I could leave but I won't. Borin named him for it, because dwarven tradition says important things should have names, and because the sound reminded him of something.

The Rumbling Deeps. The deep vibration you feel in your bones and stop noticing because it's always there. The sound of home, for a dwarf very far from home.

Mila approved. "Bra namn," she said. Good name.

Relationship with Borin

Grumm and Borin did not choose each other. They arrived at each other through a sequence of events involving a portal, a mop handle, a rabbit, and a mutual lack of better options. What they've built since is not friendship — dwarves don't befriend livestock, and Grumm is emphatically not a pet — but something harder to name. A partnership. An understanding. The kind of bond that forms when two creatures face the same dangers, fight the same fights, and neither one leaves.

Borin talks to Grumm. Grumm does not talk back, but his huffs and grunts carry a specificity that borders on conversational.

Relationship with Mila

Mila considers Grumm hers. Grumm has not been consulted about this arrangement but appears to have accepted it with the resignation of someone who has learned that resistance is futile where seven-year-olds are concerned. She climbs on him, talks to him, scolds him when he's injured, and defends his honor against anyone who looks at him sideways.

Grumm endures it all. There are worse fates than being loved by someone small and fierce and utterly certain that you belong to them.