Title TBA [Esther+Owen]

Birds.

There were so many of them in HQ, if you knew where to look; they stared down with their beady, sometimes unnervingly knowing eyes, oftentimes closer to the field than further away.

'Twas less often that you'd find one in the library, pecking at books as though they contained hidden crumbs of bread, leaving a light sprinkling of chaos in its wake. But matters were matters, and so Esther now had a (strangely compliant) pigeon tucked under her arm, ready to be delivered back to a bird room.

She'd considered setting it free, but the other Librarian had sourly glared at it, and it had sourly glared right back. When shooed, it stubbornly sat on the floor, and the Librarian had seethed at its unwillingness to leave; both of them had seemed at a mental standstill, so Esther had volunteered to walk it back to where it had (possibly) come from. The sensible solution, surely.

"It's a nice day for a walk," she'd offered.

Her coworker sniffed indignantly; "Tell the birdkeepers what a nuisance it was. Then hurry back." 

HQ boasted admittedly lovely locations... including rooms that housed birds, ond of which they'd made their way to. The rumpled parcel she was carrying let out a rather churlish sound, but no attempts were made to wriggle away. It had been suspiciously well-behaved during their stroll south towards the flower fields.

This place reminds me of a greenhouse, she thought; glass let light filter into the room (circular in shape, rather open-feeling in nature). She'd made her way in uninvited and unannounced, bird still tucked under her arm. A sudden sense of forbidding crept its way under her skin, causing her to pause. Perhaps Mao or Lutz would be here, and she could hand the bird off to one of them --

... But no. A boy sat in the center of the room, unfamiliar at this distance. Birds flocked around him as though he were a statue, and for a moment she'd thought he was -- up until she realized he wasn't.

As she got closer, he got vaguely more familiar. She didn't know him terribly well, but rather, she knew him in the distant sense of hearsay and occasional glimpses in the hallway. He was definitely a birdkeeper, and on the odd chance he wasn't, she could probably release the pigeon into his custody without too much harm.

"Excuse me," she said, so as not to startle him by suddenly appearing at his shoulder. One of the more skittish sparrows took off for higher ground, and her gaze flickered up to watch it go before turning back to the birdkeeper. "A bird found its way into the Library; may I leave it with you?"

Esther's moment of discomfiture was brief, but visible; the corner of her mouth set into an expression bordering confused (or perhaps displeased). She blinked, unsure in that moment of what to do.

Well. At least he was nodding. His face betrayed no expressions (purposefully, or was that just in his nature?), but he didn't sound displeased at the prospect of taking the pigeon off her hands. She nodded primly, moving to hand the rumpled creature to him, trying to step around the birds milling about the room (and there were quite a lot of them; oh dear).

"Here," she said, and knelt to hand it to him comfortably, "they're yours, for now."

The pigeon seemed to be accepting of its impending exchange of custody, but perhaps it was just feigning compliance until it could escape and get into mischief again. That was a matter for someone else to deal with, though. For now there were questions to be had, such as:

"What's your name?" Still kneeling amidst the sea of birds, still holding out the perfectly (unexpectedly) calm pigeon, Esther tilted her head sideways while maintaining eye contact with the boy -- if he could even be called a boy... for all she knew, he could be hundreds of years old. "I've seen you before, I'm sure, but I don't think we've been introduced."

She didn't offer up her own name. Instead, she awaited a response, face carefully neutral as she tried to recall what she knew of him. If anything. She could probably at least find out his name somewhere else, with ease, but it felt much more polite to just ask. 

Owen. The asylum child, Esther realized, through the sleeves and the shirt and the vague word she could recall of him.

... But she had seen him before, had she not? 

"I am Esther." Your sleeves are really in need of a wash. Are you one of those people without a last name? "Two of my teammates are birdkeepers -- Mao and Lutz. Perhaps we've crossed paths in another birdroom, but I'm certain I've seen you in the halls before."

She spared a pitying look at the pigeon, still unmoving. Perhaps they had all been mistaken about its deviance and cunning; it seemed void of any, now, sitting mutely on the tile.

"... The birds seem comfortable around you," she said, after a moment. "Are you here with them often, Owen?"

The not-children? thought Esther. Fair enough.

"Oh, well. It doesn't matter if you didn't know me or not." She reached out to try and pet a nearby bird; it backed away, squawking in alarm (she withdrew her hand hastily), and shot her a rather affronted look. "I suppose you do now... to some extent. Greetings are better than nothing." A pause. "You're lucky the birds like you. I think it's better to have their favor than it is to have their disdain."

She'd expected them to try and bite her, from some of the (possibly exaggerated) anecdotes she'd heard -- but for the most part they were civil, crowding around the scattered seeds that lined the floor.

"... Why do you like them? I was under the impression they didn't care for most of us."

Us being Apprentices, save for maybe the birdkeepers. Maybe. It'd be worth trying to discern how to get into their good graces -- Mao and Lutz had their own answers, in all likelihood... but for some inexplicable reason, she'd neglected to ask them.

Oh, thought Esther. 'Tidy much', that was an interesting phrase, but as for the rest...

"... I suppose they are honest," she admitted, likewise looking towards the pigeon. The fact that they disliked her right off the bat made her mildly cross, but what could she do? It didnt sting very much; she'd always suspected that it was the case."I always found them a bit... condescending? Maybe because they're literally looking down on us so much of the time."

The flock of birds around her continued to be a source of noise; concentrating on the noise made it seem all-encompassing, as though all of her surroundings had been transformed into the sounds of birds.

"You don't seem that bad," she said. A half-truth, something of a reassurance; she was a bit put out by his stretches of silence, but they could have been linked to... well. Anything, really. Upbringing, Apprenticeship. "Perhaps just... eccentric?"

It wasn't said unkindly -- she had no true reason to inject any cruel snideness into the statement -- but "eccentric" was a light descriptor, and possibly a rude-sounding one all the same.

"... Maybe that's not the right word. English isn't my first language." A tried and true excuse, offered with an apologetic half-shrug, and then she was moving on. "I'm assuming they got used to you, after a while. How long have you been... here? In HQ?"

Asking 'how long have you been dead' seemed a bit blunt; best to mask it with a different question and hope it wasn't interpreted as 'how long has it been since you last visited the Living World?'.

Esther blinked, surprised. 1863 was a long time ago...

... But she knew of older people. She avoided addressing his gaze (how odd; it felt like it was going through her rather than just over her), or his particulae age (that could be asked about later), instead settling for a quiet look and a response.

"1979 was the year I died." Brief. "I'm not so old, compared to some of you."

Rather unexpectedly, the pigeon fluffed up, craning its neck to look at something in the distance. Just how old were these birds, anyways? 

Esther had to know, though: "Why do you call yourself... mad?"

Is there any anger within that madness? She wondered. Or is the kind of madness that comes from an asylum? Or perhaps from a place like here...?

He didn't seem to want to refute the word, and the straightjacket and distant-yet-scrutinizing stare certainly didn't subtract from the image of a lost, wandering inmate. Esther felt a prickle of... sympathy? Though after a moment it felt more akin to pity. Didn't people tell him to wear other things?

"... That's... good?" said Esther. And then, with more conviction: "it's good that you're getting less mad, Owen."

Her assuredness was somewhat feigned; she didn't know what to say, in this situation. It felt like there were more potentially offensive possible responses that she could offer up than good ones.The buckles on his sleeves nagged at her mind; at one point he had been locked up -- how had he been, in life?

... He must have been young, when he died. Of course he had been.

"Interesting clothing," she remarked, gesturing to the buckle-adorned sleeves. "What... were asylums like in the 1800s? Why were you in one? Specifically, I mean -- if that's not overstepping, um --"