savetheearth

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01

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The other animals had driven Queenie out of the stand of trees she had been hiding in for the last few months. They had been normal enough for the earlier part of the year, but the little black bugs had changed all that; sure, on their own, even Queenie could give them what for, but the infected birds and beasts by the ton had cost her sleepless night after sleepless night, until even her stubborn pride could see that this was a lost cause. She had retreated after a couple of days.

For the next few days, she had been stumbling through hairless walker territory, where at least the packs were easier to spot. Staying mostly out of sight, making sure all the little insects she ran across died a toothy, fanged death (it hurt, and she probably has scald marks in her mouth from the process, but it was necessary), she made her way to a group of buildings that seemed mostly abandoned, taking shelter in the driest, sturdiest waterspouts she could fit in. She was getting hungry and very, very tired.

But a week ago, she hadn't awakened to the sound of crows desperately trying to ram their way into the water spout. A few more hours of investigation had revealed that half of the animals she had shared the Dead Zone with were outright dead; nests abandoned, holes filled with bodies. Not a pretty sight.

Today is the eighth day of blessed peace; right now, she's sitting as pretty as a very bedraggled princess in a space between a rain gutter and a roof, where she'd found yet another abandoned bird's nest. She's making a meal of some birds' eggs and watching the abandoned roads, considering going back to her forest. There's something in this group of buildings that's making her nervous... As easy as food was to come by around here, she didn't want to stick around while that feeling made her fur stand on end.

[[ ooc: lyall will be coming by to pick her up, but if your character has been in the dead zone at all for the last week and a half, feel free to assume that they've seen her wandering around, especially since the vermini disappearance. ]]

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Volunteering at Mister Strider's clinic had the perk that when things weren't busy, Julien could leave the building to stretch his legs. These days he felt that urge fairly often. The dead zone wasn't somewhere he'd want to be at night, but he knew by now that parts of it were okay in daylight.

There was a patch of green here, not so much a park as what was once quite a large flowerbed, now long overgrown by weeds and sporting a certain amount of trash. A few sparrows were hopping about in the weeds, picking at things. Julien slowed from a trot to watch them.

"Good to see you're not too troubled," he said softly. He liked birds.

Queenie peeks from behind a large tire tread. This particular building got a lot of two-legged traffic, mostly from walkers who she recognized as particularly unwilling to let her partake in their food. Still, she always stopped by here to see if anyone's dropped anything interesting, particularly to eat.

This individual is a new face, though. She pokes her head further from her hide out, following his line of sight to the birds in the garden. Uh... They're just birds. Harmless ones, probably; they wouldn't need to be watched after all of the aggressive animals dropped dead without a good explanation. She looks back up at the walker. What in blazes was he looking at?

"Let's see..." He reaches into the pockets of his light jacket and sees numerous tiny heads cock at him. Slowly, he pulls part of a stale bagel out of one. "Aaah, you're hungry. Don't worry. Spring is here, and fat times are coming up."

Julien lets some crumbs fall and watches the sparrows pounce and chirp, and pretends they're speaking to him. "Now don't tell anyone... no, no, it's a secret to everybirdie you know, too."

She can hear bits and pieces of his words from this distance... Is he talking to them? Birds are stupid. There isn't any way they can understand most landbound creatures, especially two-leggers like him. This is just plain silly.

... However, free food is another thing altogether. She'll just... casually... slip from her hiding spot and lope to a closer space, trying to get a better look at what he's feeding them. She's not making a particularly big deal out of staying hidden, but she's being cautious. Her experiences with young male walkers hasn't been exactly great. One wrong move and she's outta there.

The sparrows notice before Julien would have, and he turns his head to follow their beady-eyed gazes. "Hmm. You too, huh?" He sounds a bit less fond, but not unfriendly, and his casual stance doesn't change. Julien's not aware of it, but his own head is cocked, now.

Yes, me too. Thankee. The flat response comes before she can remind herself that she can't actually vocalize that; what comes out is a fairly neutral trilling noise that she immediately shuts off. Ugh. It probably wouldn't have been a great idea to talk anyway, even if she could. Don't want to give him a reason to antagonize her.

She pads over slowly, doing her best not to scare off his chosen audience, and sniffs at the crumbs on the ground. Bread crumbs? Not exactly her preference, and she's actually full for once, so she won't deign to eat any. She'll scootch back away to give the birds and the walker some space, sitting down and beginning to groom herself, studiously ignoring them.

"Now that's a kookaburra sound, almost." Julien had never had much to do with...a ferret, right, not some kind of weasel? He had friends who kept rats, and those were well enough. He got on with them better than cats and dogs.

This one seemed quite bold, even if it had turned up its nose. He kept it in the corner of his eye, in case it turned out to be rabid or something, and tore up his chunk of bagel for the sparrows.

There is a distinct lack of froth and rage as she licks and nibbles at her undercoat, shaking and fluffing out her fur when appropriate. She regards the young man with a beady eye... Not that she really has any more interest in him or his cadre of birds, seeing as how she already has food in bountiful supply, but she is starting to see the wisdom in hanging around walkers, if only because food in there world seems to be in bountiful supply.

She just watches this boy toss his food to the birds for the moment, her head tilted thoughtfully. She's never seen them hunt before, and all of their food just magically turn up in boxes or from shelves in stores... How does that all work?

A couple of the sparrows are fighting over a larger bit of bread, fluttering and cheeping in little bird rage. This amuses Julien - a lot of things do - and he crouches to tear it in two, saying "There's always someone," under his breath. The birds hop and flap back away from him, but aren't too disturbed.

Then he stands, dusting off his hands. "All gone," he tells them brightly, stepping back away. Now that he's well out of high school Julien lays off the gratuitous French, but it's not like animals will care. "Time I got back to it. Au revoir!"

He has a fair amount of running left to do, after all.

... What in seven hells is an ohrevwa? She looks between the birds and the boy, coming to a conclusion very quickly - she's as bored as all hell and this fellow seems to know where he's going. She rises again, shakes out her coat and paces back to her tire. As soon as he turns his back, she is also going to turn back to follow him. Hope he doesn't mind being followed for a bit!

Not being a dedicated runner, Julien tends to jog for a ways until he's gasping for breath, then stop to take up a bottle of water and pace back and forth. He doesn't enjoy it very much, not being in great shape yet. Breathing hard like that hurts, not to mention all the other discomforts, but something makes him want to keep trying.

Aware of the reputation of the Dead Zone, he avoids other people. It's easier when he keeps to open areas in the day, as he's been doing.

... All right, so maybe he doesn't know where he's going. She understands the concept of exercise, surprisingly, but it doesn't seem as though he'd need it in his everyday life... not one walker she's ever met has, really. Barring a few exceptions, they all seem to be relatively tame, friendly sorts, with little need to fight or forage. She'll slow down, tilting her head at his exhaustion, but not making her presence known just yet. Maybe this is fun to him?

Julien pours some of the water across his overheating face, gets some up his nose and into his throat at the wrong moment, and snorts and blows and coughs vigorously. He can tell that at this point if he coughs too much he'll want to vomit, but it doesn't seem to go that far just now.

As he recovers he leans back and looks at the sky, blue hair dripping, and sighs. It's a frustrated or even anxious sound, not at all his usual mode.

... Ok, maybe it's not fun. She pads up until she's right next to him, studying him. You know, for science. It's not every day you can watch someone slowly slip into insanity.

After a moment of watching him recover, she'll trill the ferret equivalent of "are you aware of how terrible you look right now?" at him.

He hadn't noticed the ferret and takes a step back when she trills, wiping his forearm across his mouth and cheek. "Oh, I've picked up a stalker, hmm? Or there are a lot more furballs around than yesterday... sorry, I'm better at telling mammals apart when they're hairless."

Barely pausing - he's talking to himself, really, even if he's addressing the little animal - Julien goes on. "I thought, okay, it's a good thing, I never stick to trying to stay in shape for long, but it doesn't stop. It's work and I hate work, but if I don't I start... hating myself. What if something happens and I can't keep up? And I've never really thought like that before."

Another sigh, and he made himself smile. "If this is growing up, it's scarier than I thought. You're not supposed to notice, when you change..."

That was quite a monologue. She blinks, sympathizing with his difficulties with sudden change, but as far as she can tell, he hasn't quite gotten to the point of no return, i.e. you are now functioning on a higher consciousness, enjoy, which is on average how profound her changes had been so far. And she's not really sure if two-leggers do have uncontrollable urges to start exercising when they get older. It sounds crazy. She is very glad she isn't one. (But what if she's turning into one?)

Anyway, there's no way for her to directly associate her problems with his, but she is sympathetic. She shakes out her coat again and walks on, peering back to see if he's following. Well? Don't start things you won't finish, strange two-legged bald creature.

Blink. Well, not expected. Julien fingercombs his wet hair, and then shrugs and starts to follow. "So did someone fall into a well?"

In slightly rusty French, his tone a conversational undertone as if wondering about something inconsequential, he adds, "Is it the tone of my voice, or my words?"

More references she doesn't understand, more words she doesn't know... Is this another language? She doesn't know. She has no context for this sort of thing, and even if she did, language barrier away...!

This was annoying. Desperately, frustratingly annoying. She has half a mind to respond to his question with a sardonic nod of her head. It was something very much within her capabilities. But... An instinct in her head was needling at the very idea of being quick to trust. Bad idea. Very bad. This is a stranger. You're not supposed to speak. People do terrible things out of self-interest, and self-protection and fear of the unknown is bound up in all that. Don't give him an opportunity

She allows herself to look back when he's finished speaking, but keeps padding along in front of him. She doesn't know where she's going. She's not entirely certain why he's following her.

Hmm. Results inconclusive, as a couple of his friends might say. Julien put both hands into his jacket pockets and continues, rambling. "This is not how I spend my usual Monday afternoons. Well, talking is. I'm well aware of how much I talk! Had laryngitis once and couldn't really, and it was the most frustrating thing. Is it that I'm afraid of silence or something? Maybe it's because putting vague stuff into words is practically what I went to college for, but I've always been a chatty bastard."

He has nothing better to do. Why not follow a furry thing that seems to be Lassie-ing, at least until it starts to look like a bad idea?

Honestly, the chatter was a little awkward, but that was all right. She was picking up words she didn't know by the handful and storing them away, depending on context to define them fully, so it wasn't too much of a bother. Mostly, she was starting to feel a little bad for the walker... clearly he needed someone to talk to pretty much all of the time.

For a while there, it doesn't seem like she's had a lot of direction, but... is that a familiar KEEP OFF THE GRASS sensation she feels? That statue really the only landmark around here besides the building they just came from. Might as well take a detour. She slowly starts meandering their path through the buildings in the vague direction of the statue...

He talks on and off, about work and volunteering and friends, nothing terribly consequential or incriminating, never silent for more than a few minutes.

"-so I asked, 'What's a jaegerbomb' and... well. I'm a sleepy drunk, I knew that already, but none of them did. We had to call a cab! I'm a lot firmer about being the designated driver these days, haha..." Hmm. This area might look familiar.

Tone not changing, he says, "We seem to be wandering towards the creepy new statue."

That we are. After a few more minutes, she enters the complex with the statue. Boy, does she hate it here... Why did she come here, again? It was the only landmark around here for miles, sure, but this is hardly a great place to hold a meet and greet. Urgh.

Why did this thing give off such a stupid vibe, anyway? Clearly this thing wanted to keep things away from it, but she could tell that that's what it wanted to do. Why make it obvious? Was it hiding something? (She has not met any other creature who knows about this topic, and assumes that they feel the same way she does about it. It's not as though she wants to stick around herself, after all.)

She goes directly up to its stand, flicking her tail, then starts circling it. She's never actually been this close to it before... Might as well try and see if it actually is hiding anything.

Definitely odd behavior. Julien stops following like that and just stands in place a few feet away. "My friends don't like this thing much. Birds or humans. There are none of the former in sight, and the latter, I came over with a group of them a while back. They all left fairly quick."

He pulls his glasses off to clean them now that he's standing still, and everything over a few feet away goes blurry. "Can't blame them, it's an unpleasant thing."

Romsca scratches at the ground here and there, trying to see if anything's buried under the ground - unfortunately, her claws aren't actually made for digging, so that's a wash. She gives up as soon as he starts speaking again.

Huh... So everyone leaves this thing alone, birds and beasts and naked walkers alike. Good to know, she guesses. She takes this opportunity to sniff at the statue one last time, then starts making her way to the other side of the area, disappearing into an abandoned set of crates. Uh... Maybe it wasn't a good idea to leave like that while he had his glasses off? Hope you didn't lose track of her, man.

Julien gets his glasses back on in time to see the ferret's tail vanish amongst the crates. "I'm not clambering through those!" he calls.

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