Daycare, literally

[achelord]

A combination of parents being busy during the day and the horrors of war leaving a bunch of orphans meant there were always a bunch of kids running around The Vault that needed looking after. It was just a fact of life. But child wranglers get sick, sometimes. Or just need breaks. And, as a wandering monster hunter, Ziel did not honestly have a lot to do with most of his time while the Corsairs weren't actively plotting any operations.

So Ziel had volunteered to take a few shifts keeping the youngest corsairs from hurting themselves. He wasn't the most active of daycare providers, spending as much of his time as he could sitting down and cycling ether through his body in his standard meditation patterns, but he routinely got up to break up scuffles before they could get out of control or make sure everyone was included in whatever the current activity was. He wasn't particularly smiley about it, but he had a surprising amount of patience, and he talked to the children like they were grownups and took them seriously. This strategy seemed to go over pretty well for the most part.

To anyone who knew the dour man, this probably felt like an unusual place to find him, but outside of the times he was drunk (and he was stone cold sober right now), this was probably the least stressed anyone had seen him in months.

At this exact moment, he was sitting cross legged with his eyes closed while a two year old slowly climbed up his back, using his hair and horns as handholds. If this bothered him, he gave no indication of it.

Comments

[freearcadia]

Harlock doesn't mind children, though he didn't have much reason to really interact with them.

Today was a little different, a young bat-kin had managed to slip away from one of the other minders and went out to one of the labs, where the pirate had found him. Children should be allowed to explore and run around... just not unsupervised - especially not in a lab, he thought. It took a few false starts, but he managed to find his way to the daycare with the child holding onto the edge of his coat.

"There we are," Harlock started. "You promise to stay here until your father picks you up, Basil?"

"Only if you teach me like you promised." Basil points at him.

"Of course, I'd never break a promise. Just let me talk to one of the adults first." With that, he looks around, spotting Ziel. Well, he hadn't expected to run into him, though he didn't seem too taken aback by the sight of a child clamouring over him.

[achelord]

Ziel opened his eyes at the sound of a familiar voice and nodded a solemn greeting to Basil. Then he looked levelly back at Harlock with a hint of curiosity. It had been a while since he was curious about anything, really, but...

"Teach him what?"

[freearcadia]

"Stars," He replied.

"He's gonna tell me everything! Isn't that right?"

"Well, I found him breaking into some of the labs, and suspected he managed to slip away from his minders." The pirate explained. "He'd only let me take him back if I answered the questions he had."

[achelord]

“Stars?”

Ziel tilted his head slightly, in curiosity. He’d honestly never really thought much about the stars. They were just dots of light you saw in the night sky. His interests had always been more focused on ground level. “What is there to know about stars?”

[freearcadia]

"Quite a bit actually," The man gives a sphinx-like smile.

"Momma says if you know the stars, you will know your way home." Basil piped up he eyed all the tall things in the daycare, before clamoring up a shelf.

"That's true, they can do that if you know how to read them." the pirate confirmed.

"So why are there stars in the first place?"

[achelord]

"Oh, true. You can navigate by the stars. That's useful." Ziel said, with a nod. He watched Basil climb the shelves cautiously, ready to jump in if the boy fell.

"I never gave where stars come from much thought, to be honest. But maybe our outworld friend knows."

Outworlders knew all kinds of strange things. Some of it was even true.

[freearcadia]

Once up, the batkin grips the edge, and starts dangling by his feet, wrapping his arms around himself - apparently that's comfortable.

Harlock on the other hand found some paper and a pencil, sitting cross-legged on the floor as he starts drawing what looks to be a series of circles. "It might be a little different here, but stars and the sun are actually the same thing." He started.

"Really?" Basil's ears perked up... or down.

"Yes, really. The difference is that they are farther away from the world than the Sun." The one-eyed man confirms, continuing his lesson, pointing or drawing something on the paper. He was using rather simplified language, though it's as much as he didn't know how to say the terms in this tongue as it is to make sure Basil could follow.