May 4th, 1894 - Potts Annual Flower Show
Podmore Zoological Gardens

Now this was something that Greer thought was worth her wander. Despite the invitation to the quiet little burg shortly after her arrival, she hadn't yet been able to make the visit. Between settling down into work and all of the uproar in the new year, she hadn't had the time, or the knowhow to bother someone about going. Greer may not have always been happy about being in Scotland, but she refused to be a nuisance or a burden to anyone, especially lately.

Between the creatures and the flowers, Greer was actually impressed by the displays. She had never seen even heard of half of the creatures in the pens before, let alone seen them. The mooncalfs were particularly enthralling with their stupid, innocent faces and adorable little noises. She may have been a hardass about most things, but even Greer had a soft spot for animals. She wasn't very good with them, but she did like them, from a distance anyway. All in all, she'd been having a lovely day. She'd even donned the flower crown of violets she'd been handed by a spritely waif of a brunette on her way through the little booths.

It wasn't until she came across the herd of roaming diricawls that she was struck with a unexpectedly vicious wave of homesickness that stopped her dead in her tracks and stole her breath. It overtook her and Greer had to force herself to move, finding a bench to take a moment near the birds so that she could watch and hold back the tears at the same time

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Howell Howell

  

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Howell might’ve avoided this year’s Flower Show after the debacle he’d had at the last year’s, only – it was at the zoo, and that was too much for him to turn down. Not dragons, but – nearly as good.

He had been traipsing through the magical section when he turned and saw her. He remembered her from the cocoa incident, and from the mittens he’d knitted afterwards. (He hadn’t seen or talked to her since, and he still didn’t know her name – but it had been straightforward enough to track her down well enough to leave them for her, just by asking one day at the Hogsmeade market if anyone had heard of any Australians in town. Gladrags had been the answer. He’d sent them there.)

That didn’t mean he particularly wanted to see her again, either, but even at a glance she looked suddenly pale and drawn. She moved to a bench – towards where he had been loitering, looking at the exhibits – and Howell stood there for a minute more in awkward silence, wondering whether he could ignore her or not.

It seemed like she was alone, so – he stepped in front of the bench, looking down at her with a furrowed brow. He cleared his throat. “Are you ill?”

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Greer had been too intent on watching the diricawls to notice the dragon-man lumber toward her. His grating voice cut through her thoughts like a knife and she looked up at him, blinking. It was hard to register if it was concern that furrowed his brows, or annoyance. "No," she cleared her throat, trying to straighten up, but she still felt winded.

"Well, maybe, but not in the way you'd think." Homesickness didn't exactly register is ill, now did it? Greer ran a hand over her face and pushed her hair back from her eyes, trying to blink back the tears. Her usual bite was gone, the defeat settled into her expression and her shoulders. The last thing she needed was for him to see her like this, but she was too melancholy to care.

"I'll be fine." She insisted, it wasn't like he was obligated to check in on her or anything. He could keep waltzing along and she could sit here in her miserable silence for a bit longer.

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Her eyes were watering, behind the blinking. He might have put this down to hayfever from all the flowers, if it were that alone. But it wasn’t, because she did not have the snappy retorts she had tossed out last time.

She said she would be fine. There was a decent chance this would still be true. She was not his responsibility, either. Surely she was here with someone who could cheer her up, or whatever one did to stop other people from crying. But she couldn’t be all that much older than Gwyn’s age, and her parents were dead. So who knew?

He sat down on the bench, as far away from her as he comfortably could. At least here he wasn’t looming, or looking directly at her. He could pretend half his attention was on the diricawls. For a moment, he waited, without offering anything else.

“What way, then?” Howell asked finally.

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Was that concern? If she were feeling herself, Greer might have given him a look of disbelief and a jab of some kind, but instead she grappled with even bothering to say anything. He was mostly a stranger to her, with a thing for dragons. They hadn't gotten much beyond that in their first interaction, but she was so out of sorts she could only swallow back the tears and shrug.

She didn't dare look at him, but motioned to the birds hovering nearby. "We used to have them in my hometown." She had explained her reasons, rather bluntly, for coming to Scotland over the cocoa, surely she didn't need to expand on why they made her homesick. Despite the fact that they had settled well here, Greer was still holding out some sort of hope that she would get to go home one day. Lorie seemed to be flourishing and while Greer was stable, she wasn't exactly happy. But what would going back to Australia get her now? She had no family there anymore, especially if Lorelei stayed here. Her friends, she supposed, and maybe she could get her old job back, maybe start her own business, but it all seemed so unlikely that she didn't see the point. Sighing heavily, she tried to blink back the fresh wave of tears, but had to swipe them away quickly, looking in the other direction as she did so.

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The sudden pang in his stomach brought back memories of a similar feeling, and then he understood.

He chewed on the inside of his cheek for a minute, half-expecting her to keep talking. When that was all she said – she must be homesick, if she was as quiet as this – he cleared his throat. “And you can’t go back?”

But Australia was far to go, and her parents were dead, so maybe there had been reasons enough for the fleeing in the first place. Howell wouldn’t know. He had never left his village for any length of time.

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"I think I would like to," Greer found herself admitting, looking at the diricawls with a frown. It was a difficult question. Could she go? Physically yes. Would she? Probably not. Lorelei had seemed to settle herself more completely than Greer had. Greer still felt like this was temporary, like it was a bandage for the wounds they'd suffered last year, but the longer it went on, the more permanent it felt and she felt stuck. It was a little suffocating, to have her life turned upside down and as it slowly righted itself, it was halfway across the world in a place where she felt out of place.

She chanced a glance at her company, but didn't let her gaze linger because she didn't want to see any pity in his expression. The man didn't strike her as the type to pity other people, but if there was a chance, she couldn't take it. "My sister seems to be thriving in the move and if I went back, it would probably be alone." Greer would much rather be miserable with Lorelei than happy alone. At least most of the time that's how she felt. Gigi had never been very good at being selfish and she thought up and leaving Lorelei here by herself would be the epitome of selfish.

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Howell grunted. So if she went back, she’d just be homesick for her sister. So he imagined, from the way she talked about her. Howell hadn’t been close enough with his brothers to care when they left the glen – but knew how it had felt to lose his grandpa. The glen had never felt exactly the same without him: it’d become a different place.

He didn’t want to look at her either – that was too much acknowledgement on either of their parts – but he could see her fair hair in his peripheral vision if he focused on the space beside him. He didn’t know how to make her feel better.

“Well, don’t ask me for advice,” Howell said dryly. (He didn’t expect she had been going to.) “I couldn’t even manage leaving home long enough to go to school.”

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   Greer Owens

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Greer chuckled weakly; that was a more honest response and something she could appreciate. "You did not attend Hogwarts then?" She wondered just which areas attended the school on the far side of the town she now called home, but still wasn't entirely sure. Her school had covered most of Australia for all she knew, but the country wasn't overly populated.

The school itself, Hogwarts, was interesting to her though. If he hadn't attended, she wouldn't get any information out of him, but it was a good distraction from her own thoughts at the very least. All she knew was that he worked with dragons, surely that required some form of education? Maybe it was just a situation where he was raised to do the job. Magic had to be involved though, right? Now she was curious. And distracted. Which was better for her in the long run.

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He wished he hadn’t said that. He had expected her to be too caught up in her own homesickness to much register anything he’d said – so now a slightly pained expression crossed his face. He coughed to clear his throat. One personal sentence was plenty, bloody hell, but she had gone and asked him a question about it. (Most people knew Howell well enough not to bother asking questions.)

He would never have to see her again, in fairness, so it wasn’t like she’d talk to anyone he knew. And she had chuckled, so his verbal self-flagellation might even have done some good for the situation. Howell grimaced again. Course it had.

“Oh, I made it to Hogwarts alright. Didn’t take to it, much.” It had made him physically ill, so at least she was doing far better than him, halfway across the world. “Managed ‘bout two months in all. So you win, I reckon.”

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Greer didn't think either one of them had won much, but decided not to comment on it. "I suppose if your work doesn't really require it, it's not a big deal. Mine doesn't." Being a seamstress wasn't exactly anything she had learned in school. Everything she needed to complete the work was gleaned from lessons at home or through pure trial and error. She had gotten good at it through pure determination and stubbornness. Plus she liked to have something to excel at. At least this made her money as well. And she would never truly be out of work.

"I'm Greer by the way." Across their couple of run-ins (though the first had been a little more antagonistic), she realized that she hadn't any idea what the man's name was, only that he was a little grumpy and was interested in dragons. He knew far too much about her and her circumstances now, he should at least have a name to go with the sad orphan story.

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Howell cocked his head, thinking on that. He supposed she had a point. “Mm. Nothing prepares you for dragons except dragons,” he said, in agreement. As far as he knew, Hogwarts wasn’t home to any; and no amount of book learning really made you understand a dragon until you were witnessing one.

And no amount of conversation with this woman would make him understand her, or what she was going to say next. An introduction now, apparently. Howell could have gone on without one. Anonymity had been a safe thing, but now – “Howell,” he said, clearing his throat. She had given him a first name; she could take his as first or last: he really didn’t care to specify, never mind to tell her it was both. Back to the topic at hand, then, and an easy distraction from it – “Why? What is it you do?”

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Greer still wasn't exactly sure what it was that he did with dragons, but she assumed some sort of dragon keeping now. It wasn't something she knew much at all about, so very far removed from the possibility of meeting a dragon as she was. It wasn't something she was all that curious about either.

"Seamstress," she answered, thoroughly distracted as the little herd of diricawls came closer. One brushed up against her skirts and Greer stood up immediately. "I need to go." She announced, not even bothering to send a cursory apology glance to Mr. Howell. Her whole body felt tense and like she was on fire and she couldn't take it anymore. Their acquaintance had never been anything more than passing conversation, if he held it against her she wasn't going to worry about it.

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