Year 844

POV: Erwin

Rosemary's goggles were of an ingenious design. Erwin had inspected them before she entered the cadet corp. The lenses were thick, curved circles. When he looked through them, they provided a crisp, magnificent image of the world. There was, however, one circle on the lens through which the world was blurred. Erwin, sitting at a desk, removed the lenses from over his eyes and put them over a letter. The large words "stables today.." became visible in the small circle.

"A magnifying glass," Erwin remarked to himself. The girl sat in a chair across from Erwin, occasionally watching him. The girl was bored, projecting a look of disapproval from across the desk when she was not gazing absentmindedly out the window. Or maybe her mind wasn't absent at all. Erwin could never tell.

The most surprising thing about the goggles, Erwin noticed when he picked them up again, were the pieces of angled metal on the edges. There were curved panes of metal at the edge of the goggles as well as a plate on either side of the straps. The plates connected to the straps rotated on miniscule hinges, and were so obscure that Erwin hadn't originally noticed them.

He placed the goggles over his eyes again, surprised to see the bookshelves behind him reflected in these plates of metal. This provided Erwin with an approximately 300º view of the world around him. When he rotated the small, sheen pieces of metal attached to the sides of the goggles, he was able to see the rest of it.

Erwin put them down again, examining the material of the lenses. Tempered glass? Had to be. How safe was it?

With a large clatter, Erwin threw the goggles to the ground with all his might. The deaf girl jumped before the noise even began, quickly observing the large man's muscles contract, turning to watch his hand release her goggles. Rosemary gave an irritated twitch of the brow, but to Erwin's surprise, no horror spread across her face.

He strolled over to observe the damage, finding no pieces of glass scattered across the floor. He crouched over the strewn body of the goggles.

Not even a scratch, Erwin observed, dumbfounded, to himself. Despite the fact that a small child sat nearby, watching him treat her most treasured item so brutally, Erwin felt challenged by the calm, unquestioning goggles. He put a foot on them and slowly began to press his bodyweight onto them. It was at this point that the girl began to look somewhat bewildered, though her anxiety was small compared to her annoyance.

Still, Erwin kept leaning, daring his foot to put more and more pressure on the goggles.
And still, the goggles resisted.

Erwin gave up at this point, and Rosemary relaxed in her seat, but only slightly. Her eyes followed Erwin as he retrieved her goggles and returned to his seat behind the desk.

"I don't know where you got these, but they're tough as hell."

Not to mention the design,said Erwin to himself. It makes sense. As someone who's deaf, you'd want to maximize your other senses as much as possible—though, the girl's pretty observant on her own, isn't she?

Erwin looked across at the Rosemary, who was now watching his face, rather than the goggles. Not that she's going to tell me, but I wonder where a girl like her got a pair of goggles like these?

Year 842

POV: Rosemary

While most other animals required cunning trickery, all the girl needed to persuade the bird were a few bread crumbs and a small, muddy hand. This earthen ledge provided a comfortable, safe landing for the creature. Unlike most other children, the girl was not seized by an overwhelming urge to coddle the bird, but she did have to prevent herself from observing it too closely.

The girl averted her gaze, giving a small start to find a man staring at her through the window of a shop. Though the shock was small, the bird felt the effect of it from its position on "her hand. It ceased its happy pecking for a moment, jerked its head in several directions, and resumed its plucking at the dainty pieces of bread that remained. The girl turned to watch it, and when she returned her gaze to the man in the shop, he had materialized outside of the building and was marching towards her. His legs were feeble and flimsy but his gait was swift; his face wore a constant stoic expression. His brow frowned in the way an elder's usually does, so that you cannot determine if it is age or irritability that weighs it down. Resting on his nose was a delicate pair of glasses with a petite frame and small, precise lenses. Attached to the side of the frame on either side were substitute lenses, but the old man chose to glare at her through the pair on the main frame. The bird took flight when the man reached the midway point, leaving the girl alone.

"You look like death," the man said when he reached her, identifying his previously indiscernible expression as one of disapproval. "And I wasn't expecting death for yet another few years to come."

The girl's hands still rested as if there were still a bird in them, upturned and open-palmed, as she gazed up at the man.

"You're a ghost of a girl in this corner. People pass you by as if they don't see you, but there I was in my shop, constantly distracted by your pitiful appearance."

Perhaps he was the sort of old man that expected a cheeky response from a child—the sort that hoped the kid would say something stupid, just so he could continue his remonstrance until his face was red. Nevertheless, there were odd, uncomfortable pauses in his monologue in which he would simply stare at the girl, his eyes denoting irritability.

"I've done nothing good in my life. Nothing bad, either—but nothing good. This is some higher power's way of determining my placement before I die, isn't it?—'Look, Buchwald, it's someone even less fortunate than you. And look! It's even worse! She's feeding an even less fortunate bird bread crumbs. What are you going to do about it?'"

The girl provided him no answer.

"I've got no food or money besides what I need to live off of. What could a person like me possibly do for you?" The man paused. "Are you deaf?"

The girl said nothing, likely the most affirmative answer one could give to the question.

The man's face shifted slightly, resembling something more like intrigue.

"Come with me," he said.