~ Mother of Little Bears ~

There was not an actual crib anywhere to be found within the castle, so they improvised a pair of makeshift cribs out of laundry baskets, which Perona lined with blankets and pillows while Mihawk held both of the babies. (She had to be careful not to drip water on anything, since she had not changed out of her wet clothes yet.)

Technically these were more like bassinets than cribs, but Mihawk had never heard the term bassinet before in his life, so he continued to refer to them as cribs. The makeshift cribs were located in Perona's bedroom.

Of course, as soon as Mihawk despoited the baby bears in the baskets, they immediately climbed back out. Teddy made a break for it, while Damcyan held out his little arms and whined to be picked up.

Mihawk rushed to close the door so that Teddy could not escape, while Perona scooped up the other baby.

Since putting them in the baskets before they fell asleep was obviously not going to work, Mihawk and Perona wrapped each baby bear in a clean towel (to keep the babies' fur from soaking up water from their drenched clothes) and rocked them to sleep. Mihawk even sang a lullaby to help send the little ones off to dreamland. Perona didn't know the words, but hummed along to the tune of the song.

This worked, in a surprisingly short amount of time. (Or perhaps not so surprising, since the little bears must be worn out after the day they'd had.)

Upon being set down, however, the baby bears immediately woke up and climbed right back out of their little beds.

Seeing that this looked like it was going end up being a much more time-consuming task than he had initially assumed, Mihawk told Perona that she should go and change into dry clothes, and he would stay here with the babies while she did that.

At first Perona seemed like she might protest that this was her bedroom, and he could be the one to leave while she changed, but then she looked at the baby bears - one of whom was clapping a paw against Mihawk's damp pant leg and giggling, while the other attempted to crawl under her bed - and apparently saw the sense in not trying to relocate the toddlers at this time, especially if she didn't want to have chase Teddy through the entire castle again.

She gathered up some clean clothes and slipped out of the room, using her Devil Fruit powers to pass through the door without opening it, so that the little bears wouldn't have any chance to escape.

She returned in the same manner, what felt to Mihawk like an eternity later. When he glanced at the clock, he saw that twelve minutes had passed since she left the room.

He handed the squirming toddlers over to her and, after making sure she had a firm hold on both of them, he cracked open the door and slipped out into the hallwy, closing it behind him.

One of the baby bears let out an unhappy wail.

Mihawk almost turned around and went back in the room. But then he reminded himself of why he had left, and he continued the short trip back to his own bedroom, where he changed into dry clothes.

Upon returning to Perona's room, he discovered that the little bears had not behaved any better for her while he was gone than they had for him when she had been out of the room.

It took some time to get the baby bears settled down enough to try to get them to sleep again... and once they were finally asleep, Mihawk and Perona waited a few minutes before putting them into the makeshift cribs, thinking that this might prevent them from waking up as soon as they were put down. Unfortunately, it did not.

After several more unsuccessful attempts, the exhausted surrogate parents gave up on trying to get the babies to sleep in the makeshift cribs and collapsed on Perona's bed with baby bears between them.

Mihawk woke up in the middle of the night to find the little bears snuggled up together, sleeping peacefully. Seeing this, he wondered if the entire problem had been that they were used to sleeping curled up together and being put in separate beds had therefore been distressing to them. He didn't know whether it was normal for baby minkmen to sleep in piles with their siblings like animals did or not.

One thing was clear - he was going to need to find out how to take care of these children until their parents or a proper caregiver could be found.

Wait... wasn't there a minkman on the crew of that new Warlord... what's his name... Law? And isn't Law a doctor as well? He should have some useful information about babies, if not minks specifically. I should see if I can contact him and get some advice about this situation.

~to be continued~