Groceries. And Ducks. And Politeness.

Who: Skye and Herbert
Where: The Streets
When: Afternoon

Skye had hid herself for a few hours, yesterday, after meeting the machete man, completely ignoring his advice that she get stitches until a bit later, but not completely ignoring the idea of barricading her house. And breaking the mirrors. She did that, too. Once you managed to wrap your head around the idea that shadows could kill you, the idea that they came from mirrors seemed in the natural course of things.

Or something like that. Maybe she was just losing her mind. Whatever. Regardless, Skye found every mirror in the house and took them outside, wrapped them in old towels, and beat them with an old hockey stick that belonged to her cousin until they were very shattered. Then she went back inside (with the hockey stick) and re-barricaded herself in there, looked up where the hospital was, and wandered down there. With the hockey stick.

She was very tired today.

Even so, when her aunt came home and asked what the HELL happened (she didn't share Skye's general disbelief in using curse words), Skye explained the entire story and probably would've been sent for mental evaluation if her aunt was either less lazy or less inclined to go chat with the neighbors.

She came back, and nearly asphyxiated Skye with a hug, not saying anything. Skye didn't tell her about the stitches in her back, figuring she didn't need to know about that. In a choice between death by angry shadow scritches or aunt hugs, Skye was pretty sure she liked the hugs better (though, being fair, the shadows would've probably been much faster).

And then her aunt sent her for groceries. Of course.

Herbert was out on his bicycle again-- still?-- and actually on his way out to the woods after meeting with Harper at the bookstore when he spotted the girl laden down with groceries walking-- walking!-- down the street. Oh, that simply would not do. He altered course a little to intercept, coasting down to a just-barely-above-walking-speed pace once he came up towards her.

"Hallo," he said, announcing himself before he got too close and scared her. "Need some help, there?"

Skye looked over and quirked an eyebrow. "Are you solid? Do you come out of mirrors? Do you have a machete?" She had four parallel scratches down her face, though they weren't deep enough to need stitching. They just looked kind of on the icky side.

"Yes, no, and no," Herbert answered in order, hopping off the bicycle to walk beside her. Elda, a large lump of duckling in his far-side coat pocket, poked her head out curiously but didn't add her own comment this time. "I have been dealing with the shadows on and off for a while." He showed off his unbandaged and obviously cut up right hand. "From punching a mirror," he explained, looking at her own "war wounds" sympathetically. He had a few on his face, too, but they weren't very bad-- just scratches across his nose where a shadow had tried to swat his muzzle.

"Oh." Skye didn't know what else to say, really. Then she did. "I thought it was a nightmare for a while. Good to know I'm not as insane as I thought I was." She readjusted the grocery bags in her arms, wincing a little when one rubbed the deeper cuts in her arm. "Unless it's still a dream, anyway." That last bit was added when she saw the duck.

"Oh dear. Let me help you with those," Herbert said quickly at her wince, balancing his bike with one hand and gently taking bags from Skye's arms with the other. "You're not dreaming, I think. Not unless I'm somehow dreaming of it, too." He started hooking bags on his handlebars so he could take more, not really noticing that Elda was investigating and Skye had spotted her. "I'm Herbert," he offered.

"I'm Skye. I don't have a duck. Sorry." Seemed a natural enough thing to say. "Should I get a pocket duck? I've just moved here and know nothing about these strange American ways." Skye didn't say it particularly sarcastically so much as in a dry tone, with a grin to let him know she was teasing. One-person socializing was much more easy than having to deal with store line-ups and the pushing and the shoving and whatever, so Herbert was seen as more of a relief than anything in comparison to those. "The duck makes you just a bit surreal, by the way."

"Surr-- oh." Herbert glanced down at Elda and laughed. "No, I think I'm the only one around with a pocket-duck. And she'll be outgrowing the pocket in a week or two, anyway." And then what would he do? Make some kind of sling for her? He didn't know yet, and he wasn't going to worry about it until then. "I don't think that's an American thing. I'm not even from here, myself."

"Where are you from, then?" Skye looked back at him again, and shifted her grocery bag in her arms once more. Now that she had someone walking with her, she kind of regretted not having brought an umbrella with her in case it started raining again. Well, maybe it wouldn't for a little while yet.

"Alberta, Canada," Herbert said easily, then tagged on the end with a little, teasing grin, "eh?" It was what everyone he told that to expected to hear-- though really, she sounded almost... normal to him. Which was interesting. He took one more bag from her, leaving her with just a couple-- it was only polite to help out a lady, after all, but he felt a bit weird trying to take them all-- and motioned for her to lead the way. He'd walk her home, so she wouldn't have to carry all these groceries the rest of the way there. Who sent a little girl like this out to shop alone, without a cart or car or even bicycle? "Down here for my last year of school."

"Oh my gosh!" Yes, Skye actually said 'gosh'. "I'm from there, too! What part of Alberta are you from?" Neat. It would be interesting to have a fellow Albertan to complain about Albertan politics/weather/hospitals/etc. with. Politely, of course. Because they were from Canada.

"Awr, I thought you sounded like home!" Herbert grinned. "I'm from... well, d'you know where Elmworth is? Off in the western part, southwest of Wembley? It's really small, but that's where I went to school. We lived about fifty miles southeast of there." Yes, he lived in the middle of nowhere, but he hadn't really minded. He wasn't sure if she'd know where Elmworth was, but Wembley was a much bigger sort of town.

"I'm from up north and west of Edmonton." Skye grinned. "Way far. Too far to go to school, actually - tomorrow's my first day." She hugged the bag of groceries to herself for just a moment, kind of nervous about that all of a sudden. It'd probably be a huge mess of people and be all insane and stuff.

The little spike of nervousness was hard to miss when one was a werecreature, so Herbert reached over to pat her back gently. "It's not so bad. It's not a terribly big school, really, and there's some good people here. How did you manage if you never went to school, though? Did you have anyone to teach you grammar and algebra and things?" Evil algebra. School hadn't really helped him much with that, though he was sure Skye was at least a little smarter with math than he was. It wasn't hard to do.

"Home school." Skye shrugged again. "We just lived too far away from a school to go, so me and my brothers were all homeschooled. By my mom, mostly, even though dad tried to help when he could." She didn't mention that she far outstripped her mother when it came to math and picked up most of what she could do from books, but that was okay. Then Skye thought to clarify. "I lived on a farm in the sticks."

"Oooh. I lived in a house pretty much in the middle of nowhere, but we didn't have a farm...." That would have been really pretty cool, if they had, but no go. "I don't think my ma and pa had it in them to teach me themselves, but we had an awful long drive to school. A lot of days in winter, we didn't exactly make it." Half because Herbert was next to impossible to get out of bed, but he wasn't going to be mentioning that. He wasn't looking forward to winter at all. "What was it like, having your ma teach you?"

"I dunno. Just... normal. Like we'd get up and do chores and have breakfast and then do schoolwork until we needed to do more chores. I don't have anything to compare it too at all, so... I can't really say." Skye grinned sheepishly. "Sorry."

"Huh. Suppose that makes sense," Herbert nodded after a moment of thought. Not having anything to compare it to, she probably wouldn't think it strange at all, right? Like how everyone figured his chewing on things was weird, but it just seemed normal, to him. "How long've you been in town here, then? Not long, if Monday's your first day."

"A few days. Not really long, no. My aunt lives here, and I'm kinda living with her? Because my folks thought it'd be a good chance for me to go to a real school and all that stuff." Though Skye had been perfectly content with how things had been back at the farm, and wasn't really inclined to complain about it. "It's kinda a shock."

"I bet," Herbert agreed sympathetically. "It was a bit of a shock when I first got down here, and I've had more experience with it and all-- and to show up during the past few days." He actually winced at the thought. "Bad first impression of town, eh?"

"It wasn't particularly good, no." Skye grinned slightly. "But at least I know I'm not going insane from cultureshock, so..."

"Oh no. No insanity. I think everybody got hit yesterday." Herbert frowned. "My roommate had been being attacked for a few days beforehand. It was just... bad. I don't know what it was all about. Some kind of realm guardians getting angry at people? I think?" That seemed about what it boiled down to, from what he remembered of his day of research and his conversations with Charlie.

Skye gave Herbert a very strange look. "Realm guardians, huh?" Well, that just fit right in with the whole angry-shadow-death thing. Oh, and the fact they came out of mirrors. Why not add some realm guardian whatever in there, too?

The werebear held up a hand innocently. "It's just the only thing we could find in the books that fit," he protested amiably. "Realm guardian... shadow things. Who try to punish people for being out of the wrong... plane? Like spirits and people who see people's dreams and fairies and I don't know what else, the books weren't very specific." He grinned a little sheepishly, sure she'd think him a bit foolish now.

Uh. What? The words Skye spake echoed her extremely intelligent thoughts. "Uh. What?" It was like he was speaking a different language completely. Or in tongues, for God's sake. She could recognize the words but the way he was stringing them together was beyond her.

Herbert could recognize the blank stare and he gave her an apologetic look. "Sorry. You're newer than me, I bet, to that kind of thing.... It's not important, really. What's important is, they're gone. And not coming back, I think." I hope.

Skye was torn between the twin urges of asking what kind of 'thing' he was talking about and changing to a random subject - perhaps about the weather. "Oh. Okay. That's... that's good. They can stay away, I don't mind." She coughed, and settled the bag of groceries in her other arm. "So."

"So," Herbert repeated sheepishly. He went for the subject change, himself. "So you've never met anyone with a pet duck before, huh?" Which he actually could've kicked himself for saying, because if she'd lived on a farm in the middle of the plains and never even went to school, she probably hadn't met a lot of people.

"Well, no. I've eaten a duck before. It was pretty good. Lot of fat, though." Skye grinned slightly. "But that's different from keeping one as a pet, I guess. Are you going to, I dunno, let it fly south and stuff when it gets old enough?"

Herbert made a face at the idea of eating duck. A duck. Any duck. It was just a little disturbing-- not that he'd judge her for doing it, really, but he could never, ever, ever do it himself. He took to the question readily, liking something else to occupy his brain with. "I don't know," he admitted. "I don't know that she will, or will know how to, to be honest... but if she doesn't go, I'll just keep her warm inside." He'd be doing a lot more sleeping than usual, anyway, so she could just snuggle up with him.

"She is kind of cute." Skye admitted, and offered her fingertips to the duck in question, and got a goofy grin on her face when the duck obliged by nibbling at her fingertips. "What kind of duck is she?"

"You know, I-- I'm not sure?" Herbert admitted with a little laugh. "I don't know the native birds around here, I'm afraid, and I never did get around to looking it up...." Not that the thought had actually crossed his mind. "A friend of mine found the eggs out by the lake, three of them. He still has the other two. So at least I know they're from around here."

"It'd be cool if you rescued endangered ducks." Skye decided, though it didn't seem very likely to have happened. She gave the beastie a little pat on the head. "My aunt's house is just up here." Gesturing to one of the many houses down the street that looked suspiciously like the great cookie cutter of engineering had fallen there some years ago, and then people had started adding stuff on their own.

"You know, that's an idea," Herbert mused. He wouldn't mind doing rescue work, if he could manage it. He was a bear, after all-- who better? He followed her gesture. "Ah, all right, then. I'll take these up to your doorstep, then?" he suggested.

"You don't have to if you don't want too. You've already been more than helpful." Skye said hastily, not wanting to offend someone who was carrying groceries. Specifically, her groceries. "I can take them if you've got to get going before it starts to rain again."

"I like helping," Herbert protested with a smile. "And no young lady should have to carry so many groceries on her own." He looked back at the row of houses, squinting a little against the general grayness everywhere. "Which house is it?"

"Fourth one up. But are you sure? It's only three bags and you have a duck." Because that was a good reason, right? Sure! Why not?

"If you'd rather I not, I won't, but I do like to help...." Herbert counted houses, then added, "Besides, we're almost there. Here, I'll let you walk them up the driveway, then, how's that?" He smiled down at her, pleased with the "compromise".

"I don't mind, but I've honestly taken up enough of your time and you don't even know me." Skye grinned back. "But your help is appreciated. Thank you very much."

"Awr." That sounded like a no. Maybe he was making her uncomfortable? He could understand that, especially after the shadows the day before. Herbert sighed and stopped, smiling a bit. "Aaaall right. Have it your way. You're quite welcome, though." He offered her the first of the bags from the handlebars of his bicycle.

Skye took the bags, with a bit of a wince - honestly, she was getting used to things pressing on, and snagging, the scabbing on her arms - and shifted them to be more comfortable. "Thank you." Skye didn't make an effort to go up the driveway yet; that'd be impolite.

Smiling amiably, Herbert gave her a little half-bow over one arm that was half serious and half playful. "Have a good rest of the day, Skye. It was good to meet you. Hopefully I'll see you 'round school on Monday."

"I'll definitely be there." Skye grinned, though the outside had looked pretty big and Skye wasn't sure that she'd ever run into him in there. If she did, she figured it'd be one of those small miracles that occasionally happened. "Have a really nice day, alright? Thank you again."

"You're very welcome," Herbert said firmly, then nodded a farewell and started walking his bicycle off in the direction of the woods. He had an appointment with the bearness before he had to be back home.