Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Wouldn't be fair?" Julian parroted, laboring to keep from pressing his face against the glass. The signage around the exhibit expressly forbid people from leaning on the glass and to keep their hands to themselves, but it was so difficult with the rainbow of beautiful fish and the lush and lively coral! Putting his face on the glass would leave behind oil, which Julian knew firsthand was difficult to remove. He'd been known to place his hands on the mirror in Delilah's condo before realizing the issue.

Just before leaving the tunnel full of beautiful and dazzling colors, visitors had to pass by an incredibly tall and wide tank full of swaying kelp. Bubbles rose from the bottom of the tank and among the kelp danced a swarm of jellyfish. There were large rocky outcroppings along the bottom of the tank, giving it some structure.

"Jellies! Look, Mercy. Jellies! They kind of look like.... little umbrellas, don't you think?"

Though he was a fully grown adult man, Julian had a childlike appreciation for things. Most adults had probably seen jellyfish in pictures or books or while swimming in exotic seas. Julian couldn't recall ever seeing one himself, but oddly enough, knew what they were. He now had the capacity to appreciate them for what they were - glorious and floating little bulbous things that had the miraculous ability to think and plan without having anything that resembled a brain.

Nature sure was neat.

Stepping up towards the glass of the enclosure, Julian made sure to stay far enough back to give the shorter children plenty of room to observe the tank. He stopped and gave Mercy a peculiar look. Looking down at his chest and back to Mercy, Julian tilted his head.

"....but, I'm not big enough for that. I can't fill out a shirt like yours properly, Mercy. What do you mean?"

Julian seemed to consider this carefully. "A gift of money that you give to a charity or a foundation to help people... yes, yes, that sounds like just the thing. I don't... I don't know how to make a whole foundation. That sounds very confusing." He patted his cheek, stepping away from the jellyfish tank to ponder this Very Important Information Mercy had provided.

"Big sis, do you think... do you think, I could, somehow... make some money, and give it to you, and you do the foundation part? Or... is there a foundation for... that kind of stuff?" With a sigh, Julian realized he was completely out of his element when it comes to complex financial dealings. While Delilah had him help in paying some of her bills just for show, Julian hadn't the slightest idea what the process was for creating an endowment, let alone the administration of one.

He was more of a bake-cupcakes-and-watch-soaps-with-Delilah sort of guy. A look-at-the-stringrays-with-Mercy kind of man.

Yeah.

Things were considerably simpler than they would be for any other adult, probably, but Julian was still making progress every single day. With a smile, Julian clasped his hands. "You're the best, Mercy. Are you hungry? I still have some money left. I can buy you lunch at the cafe~?"

Julian sighed audibly, shoulders slumping in an animated fashion. "It's... going to need a lot of money, I think. I don't... know how much damage was done." A sniffle soon followed and Julian did what he could to stifle it. Mercy wouldn't allow him to have a breakdown in the middle of the aquarium, and he couldn't do that to her, either. He'd have to swallow that guilt and cry about it later. "...but, I promise, Mercy. I promise I'll... do whatever I can to... try and repent for it all."

He hadn't the slightest idea if such a thing were possible. The idea of being even with karma and the cosmos was a complicated thing, especially when Julian wasn't aware of everything he had done in his life prior.

Wringing his hands together, blue eyes trained on his smaller, yet older, sister. "How about we look at the coastal waters exhibit, and then decide if we want food? That sounds good. I also saw on the brochure that they might have manta rays here! I guess there's a deep ocean exhibit... Manta rays look like they fly through the water..."