Gah.
So I'm at the laundromat, a place I heartily dislike, but fortunately have come equipped with a damaged Pathfinder magazine, a small sketchpad, and an older iPod shuffle. So I'm sitting there, my stuff is just now in the dryers, The Cure is playing, I'm reading my half-price Pathfinder, and a mother/aunt(?) pair tells their kid to sit in the corner and stop running around (this my guess, as all this is in Spanish, a language I don't speak). No sooner does the kid plonk down next to me than he practically leans down as far as the floor to examine the cover of my magazine, so I take out the earphones, explain that it's just a magazine, and hand it over for the kid to look through. This is the point where the kid starts reading quietly, very intent - he's obviously learned English recently enough to still sound out words a lot - and I start worrying, because this particular issue is full of dread zombies, melted looking elemental smashers, eyeless hags who turn people to stone, bloodthirsty raven swarms, an undead cyclopean thrall lich who eats brains and his collection of soul jars, and of course fungus. Any moment now I expect the kid will freak out, but he's happily oohing and ahhing over the monsters and occasionally asking me questions about if I'm an artist and all, or that the parent will wander by and freak out, which doesn't happen.
I may have just been ludicrously compassionate but I really hope he doesn't have nightmares.
So I'm at the laundromat, a place I heartily dislike, but fortunately have come equipped with a damaged Pathfinder magazine, a small sketchpad, and an older iPod shuffle. So I'm sitting there, my stuff is just now in the dryers, The Cure is playing, I'm reading my half-price Pathfinder, and a mother/aunt(?) pair tells their kid to sit in the corner and stop running around (this my guess, as all this is in Spanish, a language I don't speak). No sooner does the kid plonk down next to me than he practically leans down as far as the floor to examine the cover of my magazine, so I take out the earphones, explain that it's just a magazine, and hand it over for the kid to look through. This is the point where the kid starts reading quietly, very intent - he's obviously learned English recently enough to still sound out words a lot - and I start worrying, because this particular issue is full of dread zombies, melted looking elemental smashers, eyeless hags who turn people to stone, bloodthirsty raven swarms, an undead cyclopean thrall lich who eats brains and his collection of soul jars, and of course fungus. Any moment now I expect the kid will freak out, but he's happily oohing and ahhing over the monsters and occasionally asking me questions about if I'm an artist and all, or that the parent will wander by and freak out, which doesn't happen.
I may have just been ludicrously compassionate but I really hope he doesn't have nightmares.