Forty Years of This [Monster Hunter World]

Chapter 19

"You can't let her run around wild. She needs an education." The Quartermaster watched as the girl swung a practice sword about her. She had decent form-- the Huntsman had taken to training her on a whim-- but skill with a sword wasn't enough to get through life, and even if she wasn't his own daughter, the Quartermaster held some sense of responsibility for preparing her for the future.

"She's not running wild." The Commander sulked. He wasn't wrong-- she was well behaved, respectful, and had a hearty fear of the monsters that lurked beyond Astera, but she was quickly becoming a child of the woods. "The Third Fleet should arrive with numerous academics and researchers. When they get here she'll be swamped with knowledge."

"The Third Fleet shouldn't arrive for another decade, Love. She'll be the laughing stock of people her own age for being ignorant."

"Then what, you want me to read to her before bed? She can read, you know."

"No, I'm volunteering. The Second Quartermaster is very skilled, and more and more I find my workload to be acceptable. I will teach her what math and grammar I know, and if she shows interest beyond that, I'm sure the various engineers of the Second Fleet would adore having such a sweet young face asking to learn their craft."

The Commander regarded the Quartermaster with hesitation. The girl was now his daughter. Not their daughter. His daughter. It took time to build that trust, as family must be a mutual bond, and a strange man in a strange land was not her father, but she had clung to him like a duckling. And the Quartermaster had been aloof through it all. It was his typical aloofness, the same manner in which he had always carried himself, but it was that same barrier that prevented the girl from caring for him. There were days the Commander doubted that his lover cared at all for his daughter.

Now the girl, who had overheard the conversation, watched them both with suspicion.

"You hear that, ██?"

The girl nodded slowly at her father's words. She wasn't looking forward to it.

The Commander found them later in the evening sitting at the table in the common room of his quarters with the Quartermaster sitting to the girl's left with the blind drawn over the window blocking out the distractions of the world. The room was bright enough, and it wasn't so late, but the girl was slumped forward.

He stood behind them and watched as the Quartermaster reached across and scratched something on a slate. In the oil light, he looked particularly harsh and sharp with the light casting a fiery glow over his eyes and hair. When the Quartermaster placed the chalk in the girl's left hand, she snapped up, glaring at him and holding his gaze, she very intentionally placed the chalk into her right hand.

The Quartermaster sighed and dropped his head.

"How's it going?" The Commander slumped against the door.

"It's boring!" His daughter blurted out.

"Of course it's boring," the Quartermaster cut in with another sigh. "It's the building blocks of something far more complicated. Imagine having to learn the alphabet at your age. But now you can write sentences, and with those sentences you can tell stories and riddles--" His face briefly lit up. "And with math, you can predict the fall of a system, you can build a great wheel that takes churning water and turns it into useful work. Math opens up the sciences to you-- physics, chemistry, astronomy, all of these things become puzzles you can solve with just a little math.'

But he'd lost her. She was staring blandly at the Commander in a desperate plea for help.

"Scare her," the Commander said with a grin. "Show her what math looks like to you."