Duck Eggs: Not Caviar

Who: Herbert and Sammy
Where: School/The Williams'
When: After school

Sammy was impatient the closer classes came to letting out for the day, and it definitely showed. His heel tapped anxiously against the floor as he bounced his foot and his knee jiggled back and forth garnering him looks with "Stop that!" clearly written in them as his knee hit the table leg. He stopped with an apologetic look and made sure that when the bell finally rang to dismiss them all that he was the first person out the door. He made a quick stop by his locker to grab the books he would need for the nights homework, then headed through the streams of people to the door. He was going to get to show someone else the duck eggs which was much more important than making sure to walk slowly and maybe meet new people, and hopefully Herbert wouldn't want to eat them.

Since Herbert didn't usually go to his locker after class, he was already outside when Sammy made it out there, unlocking his bicycle and waiting patiently for the wereraven. Compared to trying to track down Peyton by sight, Sammy really stood out: the little braids and beads-- chewable! no, no, don't think that! bad bear-- were obvious, even if Sammy was fairly small. Herbert waved cheerfully, trying to catch his eye. At the very least, he was easy to see.

He didn't see Herbert at first, but when Sammy turned again to look his direction he did. As if he couldn't see the tall boy who stood above pretty much all the other people milling about the steps. He carefully avoided them, hopping over a skateboard that had shot from beneath someone's foot as he headed towards him. He had to avoid a couple more people - including a gaggle of gee-- no, girls - before he reached Herbert and Herbert's bike and came to a stop. "Afternoon, Herbert!" He said by way of greeting as he grinned.

"Afternoon," Herbert answered, only out loud. "Wanna ride again, or are you more in the mood to walk?" He patted his handlebars invitingly, smiling. And he would not eat his hair. Really. Spirits bless, but mentioning it to Peyton had only made the urge worse. Maybe he'd make Sammy put his cap back on first, didn't he have it with him all the time?

"Lemme think about it..." Sammy leaned forward, his knee up against the front tire of the bike as he raised an eyebrow. "Walk, or get a free, non-dangerous ride and not have to walk. It's a tough decision, but..." He tugged at his own hair, pulling lightly at the beads. "I'm gonna go with a ride. You can play chauffeur again!" Herbert certainly didn't look like he'd mind the job.

Herbert laughed. "All right." He walked the bike to the curb and off it, then beckoned Sammy on. "But put on your hat, if you've got it with you?" Excuse, excuse, need excuse that won't weird him out.... He found one and grinned. "Don't want to be hit in the face by flying beads again."

Sammy didn't really think about the question, he just did as he was asked/told, twisting slightly so he could bend and fit his hand into his bag for his hat. He held it up in a "here, I got it!" manner and carefully pulled it on his head before raising his hands in a "this good?" gesture. He, of course, didn't want his beads hitting Herbert in the face - he might not get another ride, then! ...plus it would be mean.

"Perfect," Herbert said, and gave the brim a pat so that it sunk down over Sammy's eyes, then swung up onto the seat. "Hop on."

He did so, pretending to have trouble because of the hat over his eyes, fumbling around until his hands hit upon the handlebars. He lifted one back off to push the hat up, then seated himself on the handlebars like he had the day before and held on tight.

Chuckling, Herbert pushed them off the curb. There wouldn't be much conversation as they rode, unlike with Peyton, because he'd feel bad if Sammy couldn't answer. Except talking helped with the not-chewing thing, and it felt odd not talking at all.... "You'll have to give me directions," he commented after a minute, once they hit the point where he usually met up with them on the way to school. "I'm not sure where your house is. Just point when we get to intersections."

Sammy nodded that he understood, and thanked the gods that by now he'd walked the way enough times that he could actually do so. First couple of days would have been hard, but now? It was a piece of cake. At each intersection that they needed to turn out he pointed the direction with pretty much no problems, and despite one almost bad turn they reached the Williams' house without any real mishaps. He waved a hand to indicate that this was their stop as he looked over his shoulder at Herbert.

Herbert slowed them down to a nice, gradual stop, proud of himself that he hadn't bitten anybody this time, and let Sammy hop off the bicycle first before he found someplace to lock it up. It wasn't that he was paranoid, it was mostly habit and a very well-developed appreciation for his only transportation. "Peyton thinks I should start charging for those," he confided with a smile. "Make it a cheap transportation service." Of course, Peyton had been kidding, but he figured Sammy'd figure that out.

Oh, they fun of small towns, where you couldn't throw a rock without hitting someone who knew someone else who you also knew. It was such an interesting social phenomenon. Or something. Pulling off his hat and shoving it in his bag, Sammy waited on the walk up, laughing as he teased Herbert. "Like those rickshaws and things from India? I think those guys make a fortune, though I don't know how they manage to pull the carts...they're so skinny."

Coming up after him, hefting his backpack more comfortably, Herbert peered over his shoulder at the comment, then laughed. "You're one to talk," he teased, giving his hat brim another tap, though not as bad of one. "I could pick you up like you're nothing at all, you're so little."

Sammy pretended to be offended, as if he couldn't and wouldn't dignify that with an answer as he lead Herbert up the walk and pushed the door to the mudroom open. From the sounds in the house past the room, no one was home - or at least no one else was downstairs - besides his dad, and he was locked in his office. He toed off his shoes as he moved out of the doorway and dropped his bookbag to the floor beside the dryer.

Herbert gave the little laundry room a brief once-over before coming in after him. He kept his shoes on, for the moment-- he had his boots on today, so it would've been a pain to take them off without stopping to undo the laces and all that-- but he did add his backpack to Sammy's on the floor, out of the way. His was quite a bit bigger. "So is this where you're keeping them?" he asked, keeping his voice down, since Sammy'd wanted to keep them quiet. He couldn't remember exactly where Sammy'd said he'd stashed the eggs, if he'd said at all.

Sammy looked over his shoulder at him and nodded, nudging both bags closer to the dryer as he moved further into the room. "It's the warmest room in the house, so I figured it would be best and they wouldn't, like...die or something." He slid his hand along the top of the dryer for a second, then pointed into a blanket padded wash basket that sat underneath a large lamp that hung from the ceiling. "I put 'em in here, and I've had to promise to do the laundry for, like, forever, at least until they hatch."

Oh, and there they were, then! Herbert came over and peered in, tucking the edge of the blanket so he could see better. It'd been a long time since he'd seen duck eggs, actually. Getting down to the river back home had been a long trek, and once he'd started middle school, he hadn't had much time to do so. "Awr, I hope doing the laundry doesn't bother them."

"Watch, when they hatch?" Sammy looked over at Herbert, his lips quirking upwards in a slight grin of amusement. "They think the dryer is their mom 'cause they got to hear it all the time when they were in their shells. That would be funny..." He leaned forward and touched one of the eggs with a gentle finger.

Herbert laughed, though he tried to keep it quiet for Sammy's sake. "They'd never leave the laundry room." He folded his arms on the dryer, leaning on it to look at them, too. "I wonder how long until they hatch. How long have you had them here?"

Sammy tipped his head as he considered it, then drew his hands back. "About a week, now. Fallon and I came across them on a beach last Tuesday night, so...a week and a day, then."

"It probably shouldn't be too much longer." He gave them a curious sniff, trying to remember what good eggs smelled like, as opposed to bad eggs. He didn't think these smelled bad, at all, so soon enough there ought to be three little ducklings coming out of them. "What are you going to do with them, when they do? Raise them?" Because he thought he'd heard about ducklings adopting whomever hatched them as their parent, so Sammy might not get a choice.

"Yep! And then when they're adults I'll introduce them to my family, I think." He surveyed them with no small amount of pride, leaning up against the dryer next to Herbert. "By then they'll be so attached to me that no one would want to separate me from them and run the risk of making them quack sadly and stuff because I'm gone." It was a weird plan, but he hoped it work, 'cause he really wanted to keep the little things if he could. He reached out to stroke one egg again. "I think they'll be hatching soonish..."

"Do you really think you can keep them hidden that long?" Herbert asked, a little amused at the idea. "Until they're adults? Aren't the rest of your family weres, too?" Surely someone would notice, even if he managed to keep them just in the laundry room, or his room-- which Herbert kind of doubted.

"Um..." Sammy looked back over at him, then shrugged. "Probably not, really, but I'm hoping. I have no clue what my mom's thoughts on ducks are - probably that they're unsanitary or something. Hence the not telling yet, at least. When they hatch and are all fluffy, though..." A grin spread over his face at the thought. "No one can resist them."

"That's probably true," Herbert laughed, reading. He'd have a hard time resisting downy little ducklings, and he wasn't a mother or a bird. "Let me know if you need help with them," he added. "When they hatch or when they need food or anything. I could get here pretty quick, with my bicycle."

He grinned at the offer, nodding his head so that beads cascaded against each other with plastic-y clacking sounds, then frowned, leaning over his paper. "...it's a good offer, and I want to take you up on it, but...how do I do so? Do you have IM, or...?"

Herbert's face fell a little. "Oh. No, I don't... I don't have a computer, or even a cell phone." That job was really seeming more and more important, wasn't it? He scratched his head. "We have a home phone... but you can't talk, so what good does that do?"

"So long as you have a phone?" Sammy gave Herbert a mischievous grin, bouncing lightly on his heels in a bit of excitement. "I can find a way to make you know it's me. We'll just decide on what a certain number of beeps means, right?" He did that sometimes with Geo, since he didn't really have a cellphone either, he just sometimes borrowed his mom's.

"Oh!" Relieved, Herbert nodded. "That's a good idea. Here, I can give you my number." He borrowed the pencil long enough to scrawl his phone number down. "You can beep at me three times if they're hatching. Or just twice if you just want to hang out," he added with a smile. Because hey, it could happen.

Sammy carefully leaned forward to cover the eggs back up - not completely, but enough that they could stay warm. "The two beep signal's going to come through a lot more than the three beep. That one should come through only once unless they decided to, like, go into false 'labor pains' or something and pretend to be hatching. Sneaky things."

The idea of little duck eggs twitching in "false labor" made Herbert chuckle, reading over Sammy's shoulder as he wrote, though the comment that Sammy might actually call him to hang out made him feel pretty good, too. As Sammy was leaned over his notebook, finishing the last phrase, he absently grabbed one of the dangling beaded braids-- they were right under his nose-- and popped the beaded end in his mouth, watching him finish the last word.

Er! What?! Sammy blinked, and blinked again, then tried to look at Herbert, though it was a bit hard to do. Finally he gave up and, wishing that he could convey his amusement in his writing like he would have been able to with his tone if he could speak, he wrote a quick note. "...Herbert, what are you doing?" He had an idea of what he was doing but he couldn't really turn his head to ask without pulling on his own braid somehow. Yeah.

"Mrrrrm?" Herbert blinked, then realized he couldn't actually talk with Sammy's beaded braid in his mouth-- and realized he had Sammy's beaded braid in his mouth-- and popped it out again immediately and took a large step sideways. "Rrrr, sorry," he said. Spirits bless, couldn't he keep his mouth to himself for a whole twenty-four hours?

"Hmm, um." Sammy was having a hard time not laughing, at it showed in his face as he rubbed at it, eyes narrowed in amusement. "Was that my hair in your mouth? 'cause I kind of couldn't move my head, and...was it?" He turned the notepad around so Herbert could see his questions.

Looking positively dejected, Herbert nodded unhappily. "I was doing so well, too...."

Sammy kicked him very lightly in the leg as if to tell the other were to quit looking so dejected. "I'm not mad - though...is there spit on my hair now? - I'm just amused, really."

"More like there's teeth marks on your bead," Herbert said sheepishly. He couldn't help it; he'd been trying so hard to be good with the chewing thing. "I'm sorry. I have this problem with... chewing on things?" He only really thought of it as a problem when things like this happened, though. Things that inconvenienced other people. Most of the time, it just seemed natural.

"Teeth marks on my bead..." Sammy blinked mildly at Herbert, seriously amused now as he twisted a bit to feel said bead with his fingers - it did feel a bit different, yes. How did someone bite hard enough to do that to a braid? "...yeah, you weren't kidding, there are," He'd almost thought that Herbert had been kidding about that, but now...nope, not kidding around at all. "So you chew on beads, which is...oh, is that why I was wearing my hat?"

"Yes. Those braids are just tempting." Herbert eyed them a little as if they were to blame. "You should see my pencils, they're all chewed to pieces." And anything else that wound up in the vicinity of his mouth, in fact. "And I bit Peyton yesterday." Which was embarrassing, but hey, it was biting-confessions-time. "Not, like, hard or anything, but just a little gnaw. So I was trying extra-hard not to today."

Sammy was turning a faint red color now and his shoulders kept shuddering. "You bit Peyton?" He asked, thoroughly amused and desperately trying not to show it since Herbert seemed to be feeling so guilty about the whole chewing thing in general. "Did she mind?"

"Yes, she minded," Herbert said, looking a little less than amused. "She almost fell off the handlebars. But she seemed to take it pretty well, once I explained and promised not to do it again." Since then they'd played video games, she'd given him her iPod, she'd laughed a lot, and then taken his last, clashing scarf. Yeah, it seemed to have gotten okay, after that.

"Well, at least she forgave you." That was the important part. If she hadn't, he wouldn't have been so amused, but since she had...yeah, he was amused, he just wasn't going to tell Herbert he was. With the way it clearly showed on his face there was no reason to have to say that he was. He pushed away from the dryer, hooking the strap of his bookbag with his foot and tugging it over. "So now you don't have to worry about her hating you and stuff because of it. Want something to eat?"

"You're asking me if I want something to eat?" Herbert grinned, relaxing a bit again to poke fun at his own bottomless pit of a stomach. Sammy was laughing, in his silent way, so he guessed it was okay. "I always want something to eat." He reached over to give one of the braids a playful, tiny tug. "Thank you."

"Wait to thank me until you see what we have," Sammy teased before he reached down to grab his bag and slide it over his shoulder. "We have fruit, and lots of it, and not much else."

"Sounds pretty good, to me," Herbert said with a smile, hefting his own backpack. Sometimes being a vegetarian did have its perks.