riverviewlogs | You must wonder what we're doing here in your part of the world.

Who: Harry Goodsir and anyone who promised him some stuff, or hell, if you just want to bug him in the coroner's office in the hospital, so literally anyone.
What: Dr. Goodsir's office hours. Bring him things, come to chat, or tell him to clean his overgrown curiosity cabinet out of the hospital posthaste.
Where: Harry's office and impromptu lab in the basement of the Riverview hospital.
When: Anytime in July.
Warnings: Harry's doing an autopsy with Victor Frankenstein. Potential for grossness having to do with critters.

The truth is, there isn't that much for the Riverview coroner to do on a good week. There was a brief increase in activity after the business with the cult, but otherwise Harry is very much left to his own devices.

Hence letting his naturalist's instincts out to play. He now has a pet eyeball-eating lizard (he is still trying to work out a system of nomenclature and is hoping someone might have some ideas) and a couple of moths in a jar, a lot of botanical specimens, and some assorted feathers, bones, and other items that he's collected or that have been brought to him by friends.

When he's not attending his classes at the university, you'll probably find him here, working or studying. He does go back to the communal housing on a nightly basis, but he keeps very late hours. Come see.

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Harry looks up from his work and his face lights up with delight. "Ah! How wonderful—thank you for bringing them. You can place that box here—" he indicates an empty work table. "I am extremely grateful for this."

"It's no problem at all, they're better off- you know, with someone who can do something with them, maybe. I'm not, uh. A plant specialist. They've just been sitting in my loft and-" He sets down the laden box carefully, checking over the little plants inside, frowning slightly as he touches his fingers to some slightly wilting blue leaves. "I think this one might be dying. I'm- not exactly home enough to water them every day."

But then he casts his gaze around the room, blinking at the array of curiosities. "You've got some, uh, really interesting stuff here."

Harry starts taking the plants out and putting them on the windowsill, setting aside the ones that look like they need a little extra attention.

"It is a start, no more," Harry says modestly, "in my research here." Just then, there's a trilling chirp from the corner—Phoebe the lizard wondering if there's food.

Hiccup is looking around, distracted, at least until Harry gets to one of the plants in particular. "Oh! Be careful handling that purple one, it uh, it's carnivorous. Just a sprout right now. I saw a bigger version swallow this rat thing whole." So why in the world did Hiccup bring one home? Who knows. It seemed like a good idea at the time. He's never seen Little Shop of Horrors.

"So you're a- a what, a naturalist? I-" The chirp catches his attention, and he brightens, taking a few slow steps toward the lizard. "Oh, hey there. You're a neat little thing."

Harry jerks his fingers away from the purple one and carefully sets it down away from the others. Phoebe, meanwhile, climbs up the bars of her cage, chirping more loudly. She's wondering if Hiccup has brought food.

"Be careful of her—she may nip if she thinks you have something she would like to eat. My formal training is that of a surgeon and anatomist, hence the administration's decision to post me as Riverview's coroner, but yes, I am also a naturalist, and I have found quite a lot to do in that regard here."

Hiccup laughs softly, offering his fingers to the creature anyway, apparently unafraid of the idea of being nipped. "That's okay, you're no bigger than a Terrible Terror, are you? Does she eat meat or plants? Fish? I probably have something." Because carrying around animal treats just in case you meet a new animal is something everybody does? Maybe it's just Hiccup.

"I'm a dragon-trainer, but since there aren't any dragons here besides mine, I've been taking a flora-and-fauna approach to Surveyor work. It's been really interesting. There is so much variety here!"

It's not just Hiccup. "She prefers eyes—I believe there is something about the tissue that is key to the species' nourishment. I have been feeding her on fish heads and she likes them well enough. She will eat other animal flesh as well—but you will see that they always attack the eyes first."

He finishes unpacking the plants and is starting to water the ones that need it, then stops. "Dragons?"

"Huh. I wonder what it is about eyes..." He muses, digging in his satchel for a salted fish, thumbing out one of the eyeballs and holding it out to the little reptile as an offering. "Maybe it's just a scavenger thing? Are they hunters or scavengers, do you think?" Hunters, he's found, tend to go for the juicy internal bits, but it would make sense for scavengers to enjoy something else.

"Yeah, dragons. Berk - my island - is covered with them. Toothless is outside, actually, the uh, the hospital staff didn't want to let him in."

"I would have said scavengers, except that they will attack living beings as well. I have never seen anything like it, I must say."

Phoebe's narrow head shoots out between the bars of her cage and she whisks the fish eyeball out of Hiccup's fingers with her tongue. She trills and chirps, plainly asking why he doesn't have more.

"Your dragon ... is outside?" He points vaguely in the general direction of the building's ground floor and exit. "My goodness—that is—I should very much like to meet him, if I may."

Hiccup laughs as Phoebe takes the eyeball out of his fingers and trills at him for more. He obliges, digging out the other fish eyeball, and then offering a chunk of the rest of the fish. "Just not picky then, huh? There's a lot of that going around out past the walls. I guess because so many species have had to, you know, adapt to somewhere entirely new-"

He catches himself before he can go off on a tangent, wiping his hands and replacing the rest of the fish in his satchel for Toothless later. "Oh! Yeah, sure, he's- you know, he's really good with people. Toothless is amazing. Oh, here, wait, I brought, uh, a copy of my sketchbook..." Hiccup digs out a binder of xeroxed papers, and sets that on the table. "There. Now we can go, if you want."

Phoebe grabs the other eyeball and the rest of the fish, and drags it to a corner of her cage. Hiccup has passed her test for what constitutes an acceptable human being.

Harry takes the papers. "Thank you. I shall look forward to reading through them." He riffles the pages quickly to get a quick glance of what lies within, and then sets them back down on the table. "And—yes, I should very much like to meet your dragon friend. I believe I shall not be missed here for a little while."

You must wonder what we're doing here in your part of the world.

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