do you ever just have the strange need to write insanely cute Teacher!Daryl that's way to OOC from a Carl'ish point of view?
Anyways! review please!
_.+._
Carl Grimes mostly feared Daryl Dixon.
In fact. He was pretty sure everyone was scared of Daryl Dixon- at least a little bit.
They'd be kinda stupid not to be.
Daryl was the kinda guy who knew a hundred ways to kill a person, fifteen ways to chop 'em up into little bitty peices and ten ways to hide said body so that no man (or dog) would ever ever not in a million years find you ever ever again.
That being said,
He was actually a pretty good teacher, much to the young boy's surprise.
He was kinda like your favorite uncle from your granddaddy's wife's side of the family.
Sure, he was scary and ate raw squirrel.
But he also knew some cool stuff too.
Like how to make a sling shot, or how to turn corn into moonshine (for medicinal purposes of course) or how to make a noise like a squirrel. (How he got said squirrel to eat raw)
So yeah. Daryl was pretty cool if you thought about it.
There were rules when it came to Daryl though.
Like, don't get hit by him. Cause your head's liable to fall right off. (Carl had seen that with his very own eyes. Sure, the head belonged to a Walker, and it was pretty wobbly in the first place. But commeon! Who punches a Walker any way? Only a bon-a-fide bad ass. That's for sure.)
Or don't touch his/Merle's bike- that'll piss him off.
Don't get too close all the sidden- that's a good way to get the wind knocked outta you real quick. (T-Dog learned that one the hard way)
Don't wake him up by touching him.
(Glenn nearly ended up with a 'Colombian neck tie'... whatever that was) and you'd be quicker to get what you wanted if 'yes sir' and slower to if you called him 'Mr. Dixon'
Still. If you were good'n polite.
Didn't get under his feet and didn't touch him while he was sleeping- he might actually teach you something worth knowing.
And when Daryl spoke, it was usually a good idea to listen.
_.+._
"Carl. Sophia commere." He said early one morning from where he sat nexto a pile of rock's they'd set up the night before.
Sophia bounded upwards from where she was sitting just inside the tent she, Daryl and Carol shared.
(Three to a tent was the general rule- Daryl, Carol and Sophia in one. The Grimes in another. Beth Hershel and T-Dog to the left and Glenn and Maggie in another... it was best if they stayed by themselves, Rick had said. )
"Yeah?" Carl asked, looking up from where he had been poking at the dirt.
Daryl looked at him with an unamused look before jerking his head to where he was crouched on the ground. Carl brushed himself off before coming to stand behind him.
"That stake there? You know it goes."
Both Carl and Sophia worked quickly to pound the spit into the ground where they would then build the fire underneath.
After that was done and their work inspected Daryl nodded.
''Get to." Called Daryl softly, eyes flickering over to where Carol had stepped out of her tent and stepped aside to relive herself.
Carl nodded before pulling the small wad of cotton batting from the waterproof box near Sophia's feet and peeling open the wrapper and setting it on the ground,
"That's right. What next?" Daryl asked once the tampon had been layed out on the ground next to the pile of sticks and tinder.
"Mmm... flint?" Sophia offered when Carl just looked sleepily confused for an answer.
"That's right." He nodded as he handed the two pieces of stone to Carl. "Why can't we just use a lighter?" The boy asked Daryl with furrowed brows.
Sophia huffed, obviously knowing the answer. She crossed her arms in front of her chest and looked sideways at Daryl.
"Because.'' Daryl stated evenly- "lighters don't always work. Fuel runs out. Things break down. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Things are goin' back to the earth- so we gotta use the earth to survive." This had Caught Hershel's attention- who'd looked up from where he had been looking over a map with Glen outside he and Maggie's tent. Hershel looked surprised but did not comment.
Carl nodded sternly as he watched his father settle in a camp chair, not far away from where they were. If Daryl noticed his gaze, he made no mention of it.
"Strike it- keep your thumb outta the way- dumbass." He growled as Carl got his thumb a bit too close.
If there was one thing about Daryl's teaching style that was to be noted, it was that he told you something once and after you'd mastered the task, if you then forgot or you weren't paying attention to what you were doing. He didn't have a lotta patience for that sorta thing.
"There ya go, bundle that up... Now blow real soft like... add your kindeling." Daryl nodded appreciatively at the small fire now forming. "Now you build up your sticks. Always use dry wood in this sorta situation. Green wood- or wet wood makes smoke. Smoke can be good or bad." He helped them pile up logs until there was good sized fire going and a cast iron dutch oven was heating up over it, the others slowly came to sit closer to the fire newly built as the sun and the new day slowly crawled over the world.
Daryl kept his voice low- only really speaking to Carl and Sophia, but still loud enough if anyone else wanted to partake in the impromptu lesson.
"You wanna keep smoke down if you don't want to be noticed. I'm still not sure how Walkers feel 'bout smoke- and we don't know who else is in the woods out here. We keep to ourselves. Just best that way. But say you'd want to make something to be seen- or maybe send smoke signals, what would you use to make the best smoke?"
"Uhhnm.. leaves?" Sophia asked with bright eyes.
"Leaves off trees!" Carl guessed.
"That's right. Green things makes smoke. So, Seeing as we don't wanna be blinded and I would rather not be covered in soot the rest of the day. We use as dry a'wood as we can.''
Daryl nodded, standing up and brushing his hands on his pants as he watched Carol come to sit near the flames. In the distance, a Dove was cooing to his love and a mockingbird was echoing back just to harass him.
"We're outta the water from the truck." Daryl told Rick who grunted in response, eyes sunken under his lids.
"Got some this morning."
"It's still morning Daryl." Carol chuckled with a smile.
"Sophia. Get out that cotton.'' He said to her softly as Beth too emerged. Daryl called the tampons Cotton, Carl noted. There was a box for lady things and a box for extras to be used around camp. Cotton were the one's the men folk were aloud to touch.
"Get in on this, lil' Greene." He told Beth, waving her over. Beth yawned into her elbow but followed none the less.
"Gotta boil the water- gets rid of the bacteria and the parasites that could be in the water. But you can boil it all the day long and it'll still have dirt and shit in it." He told them. "A
So what we do is we take this here funnel." He held out a funnel to Carl from a box of goodies brought back from town. Carl snatched it up with eager hands. "Layer two maybe three tampons in there."
Sophia did as she was told as Beth peered over her shoulder.
"Kay. Found this other day." He held up a little round disk of black stuff. "Had to break the damn thing open ta' get at it. But didn't look like it had been used much before."
"What is it?" Sophia asked as she watched Daryl place it in the funnel atop the cotton.
"Charcoal. From one a'them Britta filter thingies? It'll help keep the water clean. More layers water goes through- cleaner it gets. That's why ground water from an aquifer tastes so good. Goes through all the layers of rock and limestone- eh put two more a'them on top." He nodded "that's right. Now. Carl. You use that there pumpy thing to slowly- SLOWLY!" he held up his hands as Carl pushed eagerly on the hand pump. "Now, pump the water from one jug to the other. " Carl nodded, pushing down on the hand pump attached to the one water jug until it filled up the funnel. A moment later, it dripped through clear and clean into the other blue water cooler jug.
"That's pretty cool." Beth said happily.
"Yeeep. Now chop chop and get that filtered through. I need Coffee before I can deal with your ol'man all day. That shit wears on a man's nerves." He chuckled to Beth as he stood up and Hershel rolled his eyes.
"Watch'em? Make sure they don't tip it over. I don't fancy lugging twenty gallons up hill again." He asked Carol who nodded quietly as he slipped into the woods to hunt, his crossbow on his back.