[Hector doesn't mind sharing his traumatic childhood with this random stranger. Why not? He stopped letting it bother him long ago.]

Who can say, really? My hair color, or my off-putting aura? The voices I heard from creatures that shouldn't have spoken? My mother says I was born cursed, though she was never consistent about why. [He swirls the wine in his glass, watching it spin like a little whirlpool.] My first dog, I found in a field and raised from the dead. So you can't say I wasn't an enterprising lad.