At Somersby-Taking Things Apart and Putting Them Back Together

[makesthings]

Somersby doesn't have that many good places to hide and most of the boys know them all by their last year.

After a few bribes and Nick using his charm, they convinced the groundskeeper to let them use a shed as long as nothing broke.

Over the few years that Nick and Sam have had access to it, its become a fairly serious workshop which at the moment is full of the sounds of metal as Sam waves something that was once a clock at Nick,

"It won't work if you do it like that."

Comments

[makesthings]

Gently he sets one of the gears going,

"I think in time that will work."

[wordofa_sayre]

"Then while you're waiting..."

Nick grins at him.

"This time you can bring the wood over, and we'll smoke the bee."

[makesthings]

"What? Oh bees, right."

He pulls on a glove and the smoking piece of wood and waits to see if Nick actually knows what he's doing.

[wordofa_sayre]

"Yes, bees. Or one bee, at least."

Nick looks ruefully at his arm.

"Although there were quite a few of them, weren't there?"

[makesthings]

"Yes, I think the hive must be nearby. So you want to smoke it asleep. We should cover the cage then. Where's your jacket?"

Sam starts poking around on Nick's side of the shed since its not that big a deal.

[wordofa_sayre]

As long as he doesn't disturb anything on the top of the workbench, the rest of Nick's area is really more of a controlled mess than anything else.

"... brilliant." Nick's beaming, now. "I should have thought of that before! We can track the bees back to their hive, smoke it, and collect several of them to compare weights and wing measurements!"

As an afterthought, he waves a hand toward one corner, where his jacket lies in a crumpled heap under a pile of books.

[makesthings]

Of course he won't, he'll simply look at what Nick's working on before grabbing the jacket,

"Without getting stung again? Nick, what are you doing with a stack of my paper from home?"

[wordofa_sayre]

"Without getting stung again," he confirms.

A beat.

"Making comparisons, of course."

[makesthings]

"Its just paper and you know the stuff from here doesn't work in letters. As I've been telling you for years."

[wordofa_sayre]

Nick just looks at him.

"I know you've been telling me that. That's why I want to compare the two!"

[makesthings]

"The only difference is that mine's handmade not machine made and how are you going to compare them?"

[wordofa_sayre]

"I can tell that much," he informs Sam. "There's an unevenness to the sheets, did you know? It's a clear sign of nonstandard manufacture."

He grins.

"That'd be the first comparison."

[makesthings]

"What would be the second? Of course it is, it takes time to make it."

[wordofa_sayre]

"I'm still working on it, but I intend to measure weight, ink absorbency, all kinds of things," Nick tells him.

[makesthings]

"Then you don't need that many sheets. If you really wanted, I could show you what the letters you've sent me look like except that they're in pieces."

[wordofa_sayre]

Nick looks startled.

"You tore them up?"

[makesthings]

"No, they barely survive the journey. I always have to piece them back together to try and make sense of them."

[wordofa_sayre]

"That doesn't make any sense at all," he mutters. "Just another reason why I need to compare the paper types."

[makesthings]

"Its true though. I'll leave you a sheets if you promise to use them for writing to me."

[wordofa_sayre]

"Done," Nick says, promptly. "Word of a Sayre."

A beat, and a quick grin.

"But first, let's see about that bee."

[makesthings]

"Good and yes the bee."

The rest of the afternoon passes as many have with work done and experiments.