(Continued from \'Watching The Fight On Another Cold Day\')The walk through the streets of Oberon was unremarkable, apart from the fact that Gallagher and Alithia were both buoyed by their new acquaintance and by the alcohol in their systems. The blonde teased the girl a little about how difficult it was to hold himself back with someone who owned such short legs but it was all in good fun. Their steps were slightly unsteady but that could also have been the giggling swaying them.
Once back at the stables themselves, the Manager attempted a more business-like front, but it didn\'t really carry through his broad, dimpled smile. He started their tour below ground, walking Alithia down into the feed stores in the basement level, discussing how much food was used each day, showing her the different types so she\'d be able to tell what she was looking for when asked to collect some and telling her about deliveries. Since they were into the harvesting months soon (despite it being particularly chilly the day just passed), their feed stocks would soon more than treble. The stores below the building were looking quite depleted, but Gallagher assured her that no horse would starve.
Back up to the ground level, he led her down the eastern-most end-to-end corridor first, showing Ali the stalls and introducing her to a few of the horses, watching her reaction carefully. The eastern corners of the bottom floor held tack rooms, the western corners were for staff. Gallagher\'s own room was in the north-west corner of the building, on the top floor and he led Ali through one of the crossover walkways on the ground floor to a living area exactly under his. It was a lot larger than his home upstairs, for it slept twelve people (in single beds with their heads pressed to the walls, six on each side, with curtains suspended from the ceiling, able to be drawn around each living sace for some token privacy).
There was a washroom with a large metal bathtub, washstand and seven towels on rails nailed around the walls of the small room at the northern end and a dining/kitchen room at the southern, both with a door connecting to the sleeping quarters and to the stables themselves. There were two outhouses fitted in between the stable and the keep\'s inner wall at this end (and one at the southern end of the building), for access at anyone\'s convenience.
When they walked into the staff quarters, it was almost like royalty had entered. One of the beds had its curtains drawn but when the three people milling about in the bedroom noticed Gallagher and exclaimed his name, the curtains were pulled back by a stocky blonde woman probably a couple of years older than Alithia, and three others came from the kitchens. Gallagher introduced his newest stablehand to her workmates, explaining that he thought it best she stay at this end of the stable, since there were nine living at the southern end (all of which were male, and there were only two males in seven at this end, both of them boys of fifteen and sixteen years respectively, which his female staff found easier to share their living space with).
After a few work questions about the twin colts\' condition and who was working through the night with them, Gallagher led Alithia out of the room and down to the other end of the stables. "I know you won\'t remember everyone\'s names immediately, but I want them to know who
you are," the Manager informed the teenager as he led her into the remaining staff quarters. The dizzying round of introductions began again, with eight of the nine men (ranging from seventeen to thirty-five years of age at this end) that lived permanently in the stables meeting Alithia and greeting her with polite curiosity. The atmosphere in this room was far different to the one with the females housed in it, where she would be living, and Gallagher hoped that it set his newest employee\'s mind to rest that he\'d picked the right place for her to live. She\'d choose her own living space when she got back.
First, however, he needed to take her up to his storey, show her the fancier stalls and more important horses, as well as get her to sign her employment contract. There weren\'t any staff quarters on the top storey, apart from his, which was far more compact than downstairs. There was one tack room, in the southwestern corner, but it wasn\'t nearly as big as the ground floor, since most of the stalls up here held their own tack in little rooms connected to their larger stalls.
After a quick tour of the top storey, Gallagher opened the door to his apartment, gesturing the grubby teenager into the open plan living room. There was a kitchen to her right, a table just in front of her and a living area beneath a large fireplace to the left. Ahead of them were two doors, the right one closed and the one on the left open, revealing the footpost of a bed that declared that room was where the blonde laid his curl-covered head every night, though it was difficult to make out details beyond that from where they stood. A fire had been lit and was casting a cheery glow around the dim room, but it wasn\'t blazing and so didn\'t do too much to help. Their tour had taken quite a long time, and the sun had long since gone down by now, though there\'d been lanterns illuminating their journey every step of the way through the stables.
"Ah, a fire," the tall blonde man chuckled as he followed Alithia into his home and pulled the door closed behind him. "Look out, it might well fall to
you to be the poor sod that has to come up here and attend to
my needs now," he laughed unabashedly. He liked bathing regularly and his staff groaned about lugging water up for him, so he could only assume that the really disliked jobs would fall to the newest kid in the building (little did he know that it was considered an
honour to be the one nominated to serve the Stable Manager, for a view was held tha that person might somehow gain more favour - or a visit to his bed, depending on their goals. It wasn\'t true, but the rumours persisted; Ali wouldn\'t get anywhere
near serving Gallagher personally until she\'d been there a year, at least).
"Please, feel free to sit," Gallagher offered, gesturing at the chairs tucked against the table - or the settee beyond it, in front of the fire, perhaps - as he moved to light the lantern that was hanging from the centre of his ceiling. He used a stick he dipped in the fire to do this, wanting to give Alithia some time to unwind before he drilled her with paperwork and talk of wages; she likely needed some time to process everything he\'d already told her.
