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Post by quinnquinn on Nov 9, 2015 6:05:57 GMT -8
So that's what a taffy puller did. Owen could finally see why the boy made such an association. He wasn't as surprised anymore.
"The bird has been here before." He said plainly. "The bird knows not to peck things. The bird knows he doesn't want to be scolded." The crow cawed loudly from the birdkeeper's bed as if it knew he was being spoken about. "The bird doesn't know how to shut up, too."
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Why did you eat all of it? Now we need to stock up again!!
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Post by luckyrabbit on Nov 9, 2015 16:56:56 GMT -8
Unless it finds something shiny.... he cast a glance over to his Atlas. It was strange to him that the bird hadn't ripped out the pages while he was on it, must be because Owen was there to watch over it. He was like a bird whisperer of some sort. Maybe Owen was like people in fairy tales where animals became your friends and they would be all magically happy together.
CAW!
"The bird doesn't know how to shut up, too."
Walter couldn't help but laugh. That sentence simply made Owen sound so much like any other apprentice out there, annoyed with the unruly birds that didn't like them.
With a final chuckle he sat back down in his little paper nest in the sofa, clearly not bothered with wrinkling bits and pieces of his map in the process. "Did you use to do something else before the birds?"
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Post by quinnquinn on Nov 9, 2015 17:02:26 GMT -8
Owen chuckled a little under his stoic expression. A strange combination, but it was normal for him, if you knew him.
"I did nothing else." he shook his head. "They don't trust me with anything else anymore." indeed, birdkeeping seemed to be the one thing he was good at. And it was for the better. There weren't a lot of long term keepers after all, from what he'd heard anyway. People didn't tend to stay in the job for that long. Either they wanted to try something else, or the birds finally got to them. With such an emotionless boy, however, they could hardly dent him. "I'm not good at anything else," he clarified after his momentary pause to think.
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Post by luckyrabbit on Nov 9, 2015 17:21:53 GMT -8
"Oh...." knitting his eyebrows into a pondering expression Walter seemed to be thinking very hard about something. Picking up his glass and finding it empty when he attempted to drink from it Walter dug up the juice box from the masses of paper it had slipped in between.
"I thought I had seen you somewhere else before, but if you haven't done anything else for a job here I can't make sense of it." With a refilled glass and a bit of reluctance he stated "....I tried bird keeping but it did not last long enough to remember anyone from there....that is if you worked there then."
Sloppily dropping the carton back into the pile of papers he arched an eyebrow at the other boy as if staring intently at him while sipping a drink would help solve anything.
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Post by quinnquinn on Nov 9, 2015 17:25:19 GMT -8
Somewhere else? "I reap like everyone else," he pointed out. Sure, Owen was a real asset to the keepers but he had reap duties like everyone else at HQ. That was one thing no one could really get out of. "I do bird keeping for everyone else. Everyone else isn't tidy good at it." he shrugged.
Though huh, how old was Walter really, anyway? "When did you die?" he asked abruptly.
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Post by luckyrabbit on Nov 9, 2015 17:32:16 GMT -8
Tidy good?
Taken a bit aback from the sudden question whilst being distracted by Owen's strange choice of working he responded with an automatic "I'm 11." before his brain caught up with the actual question.
"I think I mentioned that when I got here actually." mmmm, yea, yes he had done that. Maybe Owen just hadn't paid attention? "I can't remember the date, but it was after the great war and I was a reaper during the second world war."
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Post by quinnquinn on Nov 9, 2015 17:42:27 GMT -8
"Oh," Owen simply said when Walter answered. "I'm tidy older..." Physically and actually, he thought. "They made me work during the wars too. I died tidy long before the wars." Though making him work during such harsh times though being so young? He thought little of it though, war and thoughts of such scenes fazed him little, if not none at all, anymore. Not after what happened when he was alive. He sat there in silence, contemplating old memories.
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Post by luckyrabbit on Nov 9, 2015 18:05:24 GMT -8
Ah, so Owen was older than both of the wars. That must be a very long time ago. Perhaps that accounted for his strange usage of the word tidy? Although, it didn't strike Walter as something that made sense seeing Owen's accent clearly was that of a person from Wales. He had never heard or read anything Welsh (not that he could read actual Welsh) use the word the way Owen did.
Welsh. Wales.
Walter had been to Wales on several occasions. It was well within his main work area of the United Kingdom. If he didn't know Owen from inside HQ.... "Do you do a lot of reaping in Europe?"
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Post by quinnquinn on Nov 9, 2015 19:12:27 GMT -8
"They give me lots of reaps in Europe." he said, thinking it over. Perhaps it was out of familiarity, perhaps it was also out of what HQ thought would be the least tolling on him. Either way, he'd done lots of reaps everywhere. He hardly kept track of where he did reaps, though. Reaps in and of themselves were hard to remember individually after all. "Do you reap a lot in Europe?"
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Post by luckyrabbit on Nov 11, 2015 11:16:34 GMT -8
Walter was vigorously nodding. "I always did! It's because I'm from London! Everyone on my previous team was from Europe so we mostly did reaps in cities between where we lived. I know lots of the big cities well, you can always tell where you are right away....unlike the highlands..." the excitement in his voice died out in his last sentence and with a twitch the grip on his glass tightened.
"I really prefer to find new places in HQ." He put on a smile, it being rather more wistful than his usual one. "So for reaping I'm really just stationed in the UK and Ireland these days."
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Post by quinnquinn on Nov 11, 2015 15:25:36 GMT -8
Owen was pretty sure the kid was European, definitely from around the United Kingdom. This was just confirmation and he nodded in response. He didn't think much about it when Walter seemed to calm down a little. There were places people didn't like to go, after all.
"I reap a lot sometimes." he said. "They say I'm good at reaping." His detached personality made him approach the job with an objectivity to rival some of the full-time reapers, but in the long run he'd been in HQ far more often. "I'm good at birdkeeping. I do birdkeeping tidy more."
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Post by luckyrabbit on Nov 11, 2015 15:56:04 GMT -8
Walter wasn't surprised to hear that people was saying Owen was good at reaping if he had been here longer than the two wars. It took a certain knack for the job or some strong commitment to the place to make people stay. In his case it was not really loyalty to the job but the endlessness of adventure to be found within the building that kept him around.
"It's more fun to be at HQ and go out once in a while to cut threads than going out to reap lots of people at once." He wrinkled his nose. "Like the smog of '52. That was really busy."
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Post by quinnquinn on Nov 11, 2015 16:16:57 GMT -8
Owen didn't remember dates very well, but judging from the name of the event he might've been there. "I've been on a tidy lot of big reaps... Maybe that big reap too..." In honesty he also preferred to stay in HQ but it didn't really matter. As long as he was doing his job and meeting expectations.
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Post by luckyrabbit on Nov 11, 2015 16:42:37 GMT -8
"I think you would have remembered the smog of '52 if you were there...." Honestly, no one who had been on that job could possibly have forgotten it, and by the sound of what Owen was saying he didn't remember it. "It was winter and everyone was using coal to keep warm and this really thick layer of fog was over London for days because of it." It was clear that Walter was about to start rambling on like he had with the maps from the burst of energy in his voice.
"The first two days went ok, workload was more than usual, but then everyone that had gone out kept getting sick from the smoke so there was less reapers - and the orders just kept piling up!" He threw his hands up in a big motion, a gesture meaning that there was supposed to be piles of paper imagined. "Even I got sick from it!" As someone that didn't get sick often, demonstrated by the constant wear of shorts - no matter the weather, he really felt like pointing that out. "I coughed a lot and had to wear this BIG red scarf around my head...."
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Post by quinnquinn on Nov 13, 2015 5:25:35 GMT -8
Owen thought about it. There had been a few instances where he was almost unable to continue working due to environmental factors. To him there were a lot of things he felt susceptible to, smog being one of them. It was likely he either got sick and stopped working that event, or he continued on despite the bad air. Possibly the latter. Or the earlier. Depending on what train of thought he had.
Though the mention of a big red scarf caught his attention. "Red?" He thought it over. "Nobody wore a lot of red then... But someone wore red--" He pointed to Walter as if he was shocked. "So you were the someone."
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