Rosebud
Was it a sense of duty, or true compassion that made Asmodia step forward to take the baby in? Two years on, she was finding her motivations distant.
The once-crusader, fighter of demons in the Worldwound, had found her match, and it was in the little tot who had just started walking-- And wouldn’t stop. They had a small home, but he still had a grand amount of energy and curiosity, and there were only so many places she could keep her belongings safe from the little one.
It was tiring work, but she was somehow pulling it off. Even if it sometimes meant he was hanging off of her horn and looking around up at her height. Sometimes she had to leave him with a sitter to make sure she could take a hob. Other times, she had to try in vain to get him eating more varied foods. (”Yucky carrots,” was a phrase uttered a lot in their home. Replaced with the infernal pronunciation of the vegetable once he’d learned it. He said the word tasted just as yucky.).
One thing, she was proud of, however, was after she got paid extra for a job well done. Something about bandits outside of the city. On the way back through Kintargo, she’d found a teddy bear, with a little winged crusader’s helmet on. It took a few silver pieces, but, she knew just who it would be perfect for.
And she couldn’t be more right.
‘Sir Bearington the Lionhearted,’ was what she called it, he called it ‘Sir bear,’ for the longest time, was a constant ‘adventuring,’ companion for the little boy, being dragged around on whatever little adventures that took the tot’s interest. Always went to sleep with him to fight off bad dreams. It seemed to calm the boy a bit, and she could come up with stories (perhaps translated from her own experiences, watered down of course) to inspire him. Something he always loved.
Who needed storybooks when you had once been a knight anyway?