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Ilmarinen watched Sabak dart ahead to the big sandbox at the playground in the park, grinning slightly as the kid practically dived onto an unoccupied spot. He shifted his backpack, filled with a plastic shovel and several shaped buckets, and hustled over to give them to Sabak before he could start protesting.

Sabak frowned up at his dad for a moment, then started happily digging in the sand, mostly eschewing the shovel for his bluntly clawed fingers. Yes, this pile should go here, and there should be a pattern here. "Sandshrew!" he blurted, grinning at his dad for a moment before returning to his digging.

The dad in question seated himself on a bench nearby and (keeping one eye on Sabak) he pulled out a notebook and pen while muttering a spell under his breath, opening his eyes to the mystic planes. He was glad he had found this park. Sabak liked coming here, and it was apparently filled with mystical phenomina, including most of the people walking across it. He started scribbling notes, his handwriting nearly illegible even if it hadn't been in a strange language.

Stubborn Strategist

Donat was being a good big brother by pushing Bhel's stroller to the park. His dad had said that Bhel had started to walk already, even though he was so little, but he still needed help with balance. It was a long way to the park from home, too, for someone as small as Bhel, so the goat had eagerly offered to push the pram there. Maybe he could help his little brother walk around a little in the grass.

Bhel was still having a little trouble with sitting upright when he was lying down, so he settled for squirming from side to side where he was in an effort to see what was going on. They were going somewhere! How exciting!

Glad that the kids were able to distract each other for a while, Kumoru paged slowly through a small dirty leather-bound notebook as he walked along. Occasionally he adjusted how the diaper bag strap sat on his shoulder, but the necromancer hoped he had brought the thing for no reason. Better safe than sorry, but he was not particularly eager to have to change any diapers while he was hoping to have a few hours to himself.

Maybe he could finally get some work done. Donat would keep a good eye on the little tot. All he would have to do is sit nearby.
Glancing up from his latest notes, Ilmarinen spotted the admittedly unusual trio through a stand of trees. Speaking of mystical phenomina...he started scribbling again for a moment, a smile twitching across his face. The other man's aura clearly showed the marks of a mage, and a fairly powerful one at that. His musing was suddenly inturrupted when Sabak tugged on his pants leg.

"Sandshrew?" Sabak wanted his dad to look at his work, a pattern in the sand that, after a moment of contemplation, resembled a three-year-old rendering of an elephant. "Sand!" he proclamed proudly, grinning.

"Whoa...that was fast, Sabak. Looks great, too. An elephant, right?" Ilmarinen asked him, and after getting a nod he continued, "You might want to make him a friend, though. He looks like he is lonely. Do you want some juice first, though?"

Sabak considered this for a moment, then nodded entusiasically. He took the bottle Ilmarinen handed him, a water bottle filled with some juice, and sucked at the straw, an act slightly more difficult for him because of his teeth.

Stubborn Strategist

Settling down in one of the other benches near the sandbox in the park, Kumoru leaned forward to lift Bhel carefully out of the stroller.

"I'll be right here reading, alright? Just shout if you need me," he told Donat.


Almost as soon as his guardian set him on his hooves, Bhel flicked his little tail and toddled into Donat's leg to cling to it.

Donat giggled and ruffled his brother's hair, which was starting to come in a bit thicker in both black and blonde. "Alright, I'll just help him walk around, if he'll let me," he told his father, making an attempt to pry the bull calf off of his leg. "Come on, Bhel, let go of me and we can walk around and play."

The necromancer smiled and waved to the pair of boys, then cracked open the old book. After a moment, though, he felt a faint prickling sensation at the back of his neck like someone might be using magic nearby. Frowning a little, he glanced around the general area without turning his head to see if he could catch sight of whomever it was.
Sabak glanced up at the two newcomers, then set his juice down on the bench next to his father before skooting back to 'his' sandbox. He was in the middle of an important and profound piece of sand-art, and if they walked all over it he would have to start again. Then again, maybe, just maybe he could share the area with them. It was, after all, a large sandbox. Maybe.

Ilmarinen tucked his notebook back into his bag, dismissing his magesight spell with a gesture and a barely audible "pop". Observation in this sort of situation would definatly be rude, and he was almost certain that the other mage had detected the spell anyway. "Ahh, well," he murmured to himself, "this could be more interesting anyway." Standing up, he started to walk to the other man, careful to keep his hands in a nonthreatening posture, a habit born of a combination of his physique and his dealings with other mages.

Stubborn Strategist

Once he had managed to detach Bhel from his leg, Donat took the boy's little hand and walked him to the edge of the sandbox. Then, at Bhel's tugging, the slowly moved around it, keeping outside and off the sand for the moment. Donat watched the boy in the sand play.

"Hiya," he said when they had made their way halfway around the perimeter of the box. "What're you making?"

The necromancer turned his gaze back to the yellowed pages of the book, though he glanced up a few times at the other mage approaching. The man looked like he could easily break Kumoru in half. And he clearly had magic as well. Some people were just lucky, Kumoru supposed.

"Hello," he said without raising his eyes again when the other man was close enough to hear.
"Hello. Cute kids. Nice to see a fellow mage around here..." Ilmarinen sat down on the far end of the bench. "Although to tell the truth, I'm not all that suprised. As far as I've seen, this place always has one more unusual thing lurking around the next corner. At least most of them are friendly..." he trailed off, realising he was babbling. Why was he so bad wth other people, anyway. It wasn't as though his physical gifts were something to be ashamed of. He extended his hand, grimicing slightly as his sleave caught on the bandage over the spot where a hot spark had seared clean through his physical and magical barriers and had given him a nasty burn the day before. "I'm Ilmarinen."

Sabak glanced up at the two boys standing over at the edge of the sandbox, then over at his dad. Nope, no help forthcoming. He would have to handle this himself. Standing up, he waved tenativly to them. How could he tell them. His daddy didn't usually have trouble understanding him, but...

"Sand..." he said, and then sat down and started scribbling somthing with one claw in the sand. After a moment, the result (if digitally copied and heavily repaired) resembled a polaroid picture. Then he pointed at the first elephant. "Shrew."

Stubborn Strategist

Bhel tilted his head to the side, and looked confused.

Donat tilted his head the other way, glanced at Bhel, then shrugged.

The young bull then stepped over the wooden edge of the sandbox onto the sand, letting go of his brother's hand and holding his arms out to the sides for balance. His little tail flicked to one side or the other every now and then as he glanced at the picture in the sand again, then got distracted by the sand at his feet.

Bhel leaned down awkwardly and stuck out one finger like he was going to draw in the sand, too, but the soft sand shifted beneath his hooves a little, enough to cause the baby to start to fall.

"Uuuaaah!" he yelped inarticulately as he flapped his chubby little arms in the air.


Donat stepped forward with his arms out, trying to catch Bhel. "Careful, the sand is squishy!"
Whoops...that didn't go as planned. Sabak jumps forward and manages to snag Bhel's arms for a moment to slow him down, but then he has to let go before his claws dig in to the baby's tender skin. Still, its enough that Bhel is going to land on his toosh rather than tumbling into his brother or worse, hitting his head on the edge of the sandbox.

Stubborn Strategist

"I'm Asahi Kumoru," the necromancer replied with an automatic bow from the waist in greeting. Then he seemed to notice the other mage's outstretched hand, and took it in his own to shake.

"I know what you mean about the strange things here, though." He nodded to the boys in the sandbox. "The little infant is walking already, and he's scarcely a week old, for starters. His name is Bhel. The other boy, Donat, is part goat."

... It sounded so weird to actually say things like that out loud.


Bhel hit the ground with a puff of sand, and immediately burst into tears.

Donat sighed and sat down beside his brother, picking up Bhel and letting the smaller boy rest his head on his leg.

He gave the shew boy a long suffering smile as he tried to get the bull to stop crying. "He's my little brother. I think he'll be okay in a minute." The goat glanced at the sobbing Fa'e, then back to the stranger. "What's your name? Do you have any little brothers?"
Sabak grins and leans over and puts a finger in the sand, carefully writing his name...it takes him a couple tries, but eventually he manages to get the right letters scrawled in the sand. Then he points to himself, "Sandshrew!" Hopefully that will work, but he's very proud that he managed to write his name all by himself. then he points to Bhel and then back at himself while shaking his head. He wished his daddy was here to answer these questions...it was hard getting other people to understand.

"Heh. My little one is apparently part Sandshrew, which is a species of Pokemon...which are apparently critters with some sort of ties to different elemental forces and...well, stuff. Its kinda hard to explain." Ilmarinen tried his level best not to grin as Sabak wrote his name in the sand. It had taken about two weeks of pretty diligent work to get him to learn that, and a handful of the lollipops with crickets embedded in them that he kept carefully hidden on a top shelf to give to Sabak on occasion.

Stubborn Strategist

"Elemental animals? Interesting...." Kumoru looked over at the sandbox, to get another look at Ilmarinen's little boy and to see if Bhel was crying enough to need more of the necromancer's attention.

Donat caught his father looking at him, and gave him a quick reassuring grin; he could totally handle this baby thing by himself because he was a big brother! Daddy need not worry at all!

Then he looked back to what the other boy was writing in the sand. "Your name's Sabak? Or Sandslash? But you have no little brothers?" Did he get it right? The goat thought this was kind of fun.

Bhel stopped crying for a moment to take a deep breath, then promptly put the air to good use wailing again.
Sabak grinned and nodded before wincing. That little kid was certainly LOUD. He didn't look all that hurt though. Maybe...

He trundled over to the pike of bright plastic toys and picked up the bright blue shovel, then came back and held it out to the crying boy. "Sand?"


Ilmarinen crossed his fingers, hoping Sabak's idea would work. The boys seemed to be getting along OK, especially considering Sabak's pecular speach...something. It wasn't quite an impediment, and he had been assured by Alpha and the other techs that Sabak would gradually gain the ability to speak, but for now it made communication tricky. Suddenly, in a fit of curiosity, he asked, "So what do you study?"

Stubborn Strategist

Bhel looked up at the shovel as it was offered to him, then quieted down to a level of pouty whimpering.

Donat had not really done a whole lot of playing in the sand before, but now was certainly not too late to start. He took the shovel from Sabak, then scooped up a little sand before tilting the shovel to let it trickle out into the box again.

"See, Bhel, you can dig with it," he told the little boy, then offered him the shovel.

The Fa'e curled his chubby baby fingers around the shovel and poked the blade of it into the sand. He lacked the hand-eye coordination to scoop like his brother had, but a small smile appeared on his lips anyway.

The goat laughed a little, then leaned over to see the things Sabak had been working on when they first got to the sandbox. "What are you making?" he asked. "Oh, and let me know when you need your shovel back. Hopefully my brother won't drool on it."
Glancing aroundat the picture he had been making, now totally in ruins, Sabak shrugged. That was a complete loss. So now wh...ah! He now had helpers...there was a thing in one of the books Daddy had gotten him from the library. A sand castle. Sabak knelt in the sand and started scribbling a picture of it, followed by a question mark. Maybe they could make one of these?

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