Ok, so please hear me out because I've been thinking about this in depth. Imagine Karn helping his human friend raise their baby. (Imagine him carrying the baby around in his scarf)
ooohoho h KARN LOVE IN THE YEAR 2024.
He;s like... the most imperfect perfect babysitter you could ask for. Doesn't see danger as well as others might, so your baby will end up going to places a baby should definitely not be going, i.e., lava-filled dungeons and demon-infested pits etc.
However, you have to trust that Karn is a fight-to-the-death kind of maker. Just because he wanted to show your little tyke a cool treasure at the bottom of an ancient well doesn't mean he won't protect your baby with every single fibre of his being.
He's as attached to the kid as he is to you. And he'd never betray your trust by letting something happen to his little brother/sister.
Out of the dungeons and in your regular, day-to-day life, Karn is still a proud - if scatter brained - protector. And a very proficient one too.
Are you tired from carrying the baby around on your shoulder all day? He'll use his scarf like a sling, bundling them up inside the warm fabric, all the while boasting about how his big, burly arms won't ever get tired. He might even try to flex for you at the same time, which earns him nothing but a gentle laugh.
Need to get so much done but you also need to watch the baby? Say no more, Karn can be an extra set of eyes for you. Just wait and see! Why, he'll take the baby out into the garden and watch them play safely under his protective-...
Where did they go?
So, the baby nearly crawled into a hole under his watch, it could have happened to anybody. The important thing is that Karn nearly tripped over his own feet lunging forwards to snag the back of their overalls and hoist them away from danger, so if anything, he's kind of a hero.
Your hero? Perhaps?
When you're trying to rock the baby to sleep but fighting off exhaustion yourself, Karn will happily set aside his evening to pick you and the baby up and balance the two of you on his broad chest, beaming proudly whilst you grumble at him, feeble in your resistance. This way, he can rock you both to sleep, and everyone gets some shut eye. It's a win win.
Wow, he's smart! You must be so grateful to have a friend as smart as him.
Of course, he feels a smidgen less smart when he allows a rogue demon to venture too close to your home. A stalker. Sniffing out the soft bodies hiding within.
He still regrets what he let himself become in that moment when he heard you scream from the garden and all but smashed his way through your living room wall, his eyes locking at once to the enormous, catlike beast trying to claw at you while you fended it off with a poker from the fire, keeping yourself valiantly planted between it and the baby cradled in your opposite arm.
Whatever ancient instinct he'd borrowed from his ancestors leapt to the fore in the blink of an eye. Protect the young.
Well he had. It was brutal. You've seen brutal, but you'd both privately hoped your baby never would. Karn was almost inconsolable after the stalker way pulverised into your living room carpet. A snarling, heaving brute who seemed nearly double in size for all his posturing and ferocity. The baby's crying kept him agitated, whipping his head back and forth whilst he crowded you both into a corner of the room and stood guard, his back bent low to accommodate his size under the ceiling.
It takes several minutes of gentle coaxing, cajoling and the softest voice you can muster to convince Karn back into himself. Even longer before he lets you leave the corner, and only when you make him hold the baby so you can focus on cleaning up what's left of your would-be assailant. You didn't realise why he seemed so reluctant to hold them at the time, he usually loves holding them. It was only later you realised he was terrified of losing himself in that space between incoherent rage and absolute fear again, and something... bad might happen to you or the kid...
