[Private: Owen - Walter] Why is a raven like a writing desk?

Walter squinted at his team mate. He was mentally trying to sift through the faces of the people he had met that week, some stood out, but they were all people he had met for prolonged periods of time later, like his previous team mates. The faces all ended up slipping into a blur. It simply was too little information to go on.

"What colour was your scarf?"

Mimicking the nod from Owen Walter placed his hand thoughtfully on his chin with a "hmm". Peeled tree...those were kinda yellow, weren't they? But he had just said brown...some trees did look kinda brown on the inside after a while though....kind of red-brown...some stayed yellow brown...and then there were those that just went brown - brown.

Sometimes Owen was a bit hard to understand. There was little help that a lot of people at HQ, especially older people, wore brown. It was such an old people's colour he could remember at least five people from that time with some variation of brown coloured scarves. Perhaps if he got it clarified a bit more....

"Did it have patterns or something?" His hand came off his face, palm up in a sort of shrugging motion whilst looking dead straight at Owen. Patterns could help him narrow it down a bit - as long as Owen didn't answer polka dots everything would be fine. Actually it would probably be polka dots. Round white dots had been all the rage.... Walters mind halted it's turning gears with a lightning bolt of realization hit him.

"White! Hair!" Almost shouting at Owen as if he hadn't realize the other boy's unusual hair colour before. "You're that guy I met up with at the National Gallery!"

Owen did that weird thing that Walter had seen him do a few times before. A kind of flicker to his entire being. Then followed some sort of disjointed muttering. It was always when there was a very loud sound.

I wonder how loud the sound has to be to make him do that.
The thought of finding out how much was too much amused Walter until he could place the reaction to something familiar.
It's like a bird trying to fly away.
He felt a sting of guilt for even considering it. Walter liked Owen and didn't want him to go away so he managed to steer his mind back on track to the topic of the meeting of theirs from many years ago.

“Yes, National Gallery." He nodded. "I was wearing the red scarf when I met you there."

Making an effort to get Owen back into the conversation it almost felt like he had been doing this kind of keeping the other person in the loop of the subject many times before. Odd. He hadn't really had that many conversations with him so it shouldn't feel familiar.

"We supposed to to go reap someone in the museum remember?”

This was turning out to be quite nostalgic which filled the little boy with a feeling of delight. It wasn't often he got to speak with new people about old reaps and the like these days. Nodding along with Owen to encourage him to go on, he stopped quite abruptly at the "he could see us".

The man had seen Owen all right. And then he ran. Walter had up till this point stored that particular experience under "things spiritually aware humans do that's a hassle so I decided to forget about it and remember what I deemed was the fun part instead".

He was a bit at odds with how the other boy functioned with his mannerisms all over the place so he observed Owen's expression to see if the other boy shared his experience of what had passed - or if he remembered at all. "It was a bit weird. I had never had anyone run away from me like that before." True enough, most people he met just thought he was lost and offered to walk him home or take him to the police station because he was so small and out of place, but this man had dashed off before he could even think about going over.

It was fun though to run through the building and chase the man...Walter wondered why he had put that away when he remembered that they broke something in the process. The loud sound had scared Owen half to death while running. Whoops. The boy gave him an odd look, Walter wasn't sure if he was recalling that part, but Owen seemed to be satisfied with the more boring piece of the story where they had talked instead. Yeah, perhaps better let that broken thing stay forgotten...

What he had almost forgotten as well was his glass of juice, however the thought of running around in smoke had him reaching out for it again.

“I like talking.” Walter lit up in a smile at Owen, grabbing on to the half full glass.

“It's fun to talk to other apprentices, especially now that I have a team. Normal people can't see me and when I try to reap the ones that can, they insist to take me to the police because they think I'm a lost little child.” wrinkling his nose at the offence he took another sip of his drink.

Walter lifted an eyebrow. Talking wasn't hard. You just said what you thought...though Owen's vocabulary might be a bit small. He did use the word “tidy” all over the place.

Watching Owen fiddle around with his long sleeves Walter put his glass down on one of the papers that were scattered across the floor. Now that he thought about it his new team mate didn't really strike him to be much of a people person. It wasn't as if he spoke much unless spoken to. Not back at their reap together, and not now when they lived in the same space.

“Is that why you work with the birds? Because they are not people...?”