Parents...

The second Guiscard arrived in his room, he instantly collapsed into his bed, groaning deeply and closing his eyes. He had been up all night to stir their airship to the Great Divide in Larea Vanya and now he just wanted to sleep... He would need the energy... After all, he'd have to spend full three days with his father.

It wasn't that Guiscard disliked his father in any way, no... But the old dwarf was just too occupied with traditions, values,... and the fact that his only son, with 23 years of age still hadn't found a girl and settled down with was like a stab right into his big dwarven heart.

The young man was anything but a regular dwarf however... He was taller than most humans due to his mixed heritage and due to said blood barely able to grow a nice thick beard as dwarfs were usually known for. Still, he took really good care of at least the small one he had been able to maintain. He had the same dedication and passion to tinker as his father, but back when his best friend Meallán had moved to Zeventus to open an airship craft with the hep of his family's money there, he had followed him right away, leaving Larea Vanya and his family to work where most tinkers actually did: The wind realm.

Guis still remembered how devastated his father had been when his 16 year old boy had decided to leave the Great Divide, not taking over his father's business, but instead trying his luck in one of the bigger cities of Zeventus. Up until this day, the half dwarf had never regretted this decision.

He loved his father... but the man could be extremely tiring.

“Rise and shine!! We won't get any work done if you sleep all day!” Camborin, Guiscard's father, entered the door with a loud thud, the iron boots he wore making loud clanking sounds on the stone ground of the dwarven home.

“Daaaaad! I arrived only an hour ago! I need some sleep!” Guiscard whined into his pillow, not bothering to look up. “Go and ask Kiri and Tai to help you...” The bat and his eagle friend had come to Larea Vanya with him. Camborin had asked for his son's help in building a special order for one of the nobles in the area, an airship with a new type of crystal engine, so they would need a test pilot, which was the bat's job in their small business in Zeventus.

“Both already left. We won't need them the next two days until the airship is ready! Come on!” The short man laughed, pulling the blankets away from his 'little boy' and picking Guiscard up.

Camborin was as dwarven looking as someone possibly could: He was as wide as he was tall, hard muscles showing beneath his dirty skin, the large braided beard hanging from his face and covering most of his chest. He had dark little yet friendly eyes, rimmed by the outlines of his goggles that were pulled back into his hair. That part of his face probably the only clean patch of skin on his entire body, oil, dirt and ashes hanging on him otherwise.

“Enough sleep! Time for work!!”



Hammering on the iron plates tiredly, Guiscard yawned again and again, his eyes a little unfocused but at least making progress. Most of the parts for the new airship were done and put together already but the so called 'heart' was still missing... The ether extraction generator... It was a very complicated process and every such extraction generator was different, so there was no such thing as a standard generator...  They had to form every part perfectly by hand, calibrating it and putting it together into the ship eventually to make it run. It was what excited him and Meallán the most about airship crafting... but granted, usually when he worked on one of them, he wasn't running on a single hour sleep with his father in the background talking about the most awkward subjects.

“You should go visit your Mom while you are here too, you know?” Camborin smiled brightly, putting some of the parts his son had made together, hammering down on them to make sure no energy could leak out at any seam.

“We talked about that, Dad... I'm not interested in seeing her.” Guis sighed, continuing to form the pieces and hoping the subject was through... though in all reality, he knew better already.

“Oh come on... you just smelled really nice last time. You can't be mad on her forever for trying to nibble on your arm.”

“Dad. She is a mountain giant. Her skull in comparison to her brain is like comparing a watermelon to a peanut! She eats people and I'm sick and tired of every time I go to visit her, she is trying to lick on me whether I would make a nice dessert.” The half dwarf groaned, rolling his eyes. “When she tried to eat me the time before that, what's your excuse there, huh? Her cousin was there for visit too and because he didn't like his mountain goat, Mom tried to offer me instead.”

“She is a very polite host you got to admit.” Camborin nodded, his eyes hazy while thinking of the love of his life.

Groaning, Guiscard gave up, trying to collect all his patience and hammering on, the strikes way stronger and a tad more aggressive and annoyed though...

“Talking about which~ Have you finally found a nice dwarf girl over in Zeventus?” Camborin grinned sheepishly at his son. Not -that- subject again.

“Dad, I told you: No. I don't have a girl friend and I am not interested in--”

“You know I wouldn't be mad if you brought a dwarven male, right? I am very tolerant in these things.”

Another loud groan echoed from the poor, tall man's lips as he dropped his hammer and just buried his face in his hands for a second to take a deep... VERY deep breath.

“Dad, for the last time. I'm not into dwarfs. Okay? I just... don't find attraction in... lady beards or facial fluff. And besides, I'm double as tall as them and not even half as broad!” Guiscard shook his head, having had that conversation one way or another about a dozen times with his father already, but nothing managed to get through the thick skull of this dwarf it seemed...

“Oh hush! That perfectly equals things out, don't you think? And if you get a nice hairy girl, it totally makes up for the lack of your own beard!” Camborin said with a wide smile. He meant only well for his son... but the way he showed it was usually not bringing that across too well. “Besides, look at your mother and I! That worked out perfectly, and seriously, that size difference is a bit more extreme~ The night we made you, we--”

“I'M NOT LISTENING! LALALALALA!!” Guiscard called out loudly while pressing his ears shut and turning away. Seriously... He didn't -want- to know how a five meter tall mountain giant and a 1.20 m short dwarf slept with each other. His father had once tried to make a joke, telling him it was like throwing a sausage into a tunnel and that image hadn't left his mind since almost ten years, so there was no way he was going to listen to that now!

“Oh, don't be so uptight! You react like an immature child each and every time we talk about stuff like that.” Camborin shook his head with a sigh. “There is nothing wrong with two people loving each other and making a child... Admittedly, your birth was a bit complicated considering you simply fell out of your mother and luckily I noticed to catch you but hey, not every man can tell such an interesting story on his first date! I bet it is a real ice breaker!!”

“This is a nightmare...” Guiscard just shook his head and picking up his hammer again. Grasping a bit of cotton which they used for insulation, he stuffed it into his ears, continuing to hammer down on the metal as loudly as he could to shut out his father's voice... telling himself again and again that in two days, after Tai tested the airship, they would be able to get back to Zeventus, far away from his father's nursing stories.