greer (greerlove) wrote in shadows_rpg, @ 2018-08-27 13:52:00 |
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Entry tags: | #november 2017, greer, greer x noah |
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Who: Greer and Noah
When: Late afternoon, Tuesday, November 7th
Where: Loomis Antiques
Status: Complete
The rain rarely bothered Greer. It could be inconvenient from time to time, but she found it added a bit of ambience to this town, especially lately. If not for the darkness that seemed to hang over Point Pleasant like a dark cloud, this would have been the type of town she would find on a postcard in a tourist shop. Wish You Were Here! There might have been a lot to worry about here, but there was also a lot to enjoy. The shops, the nature, the people. Rost. She and Devlin had begun renting a place in Seaview, and she knew it was because they weren’t ready to leave the cemetery caretaker yet. It was possible they would never be ready, but when the time came to leave Point Pleasant, Greer was hoping Rost would come with them.
The weather today wasn’t the worst. The skies were gray and the rain was light and scattered, but it wasn’t so bad that it kept her inside. Greer was walking down Main Street again until she felt the urge to step into the antique shop that was finally open. Browsing was one of her most favorite things to do, as was observing the people who were shopping there with her. She had met quite a few people in the past couple of weeks. Not all of them were up to chatting with a stranger, but for the most part, the people of Point Pleasant were rather welcoming.
She spotted the young man in the antique and oddities shop. He was wandering about casually, just as she was, and Greer approached him, her gaze on the shelf in front of them that was full of aged paperbacks. “You’re not a local, are you?” Greer asked the young man as she reached out to pull one of the paperbacks off the shelf.
The dreary weather was appropriately atmospheric for this weird as hell town that Noah continued to find himself in. He and Magnus could, technically, leave whenever, but here they remained and Noah had to admit that Point Pleasant had some draw to it that he couldn’t quite define. It should have been like any other of the small towns they had visited; maybe it was and he was just letting himself get too caught up in the narrative of it all, but even he had to admit some terrible luck kept happening around them.
Halloween had a been a bad trip, though, and maybe he and Magnus should have known better than to take candy from strangers, but. It wasn’t the first time and even now probably wouldn’t be the last. The rest of the week had been relatively uneventful, if inexplicably tense, and Noah kept sleeping poorly in his own room, only really falling soundly asleep when he accidentally dozed off watching a movie with Magnus. The night before had been one such night, so Noah had spent most of Tuesday getting caught up on writing some editorial notes to send to a friend back in Chicago and by the afternoon needed a break.
There had been a shop he had passed several times but always seemed to be closed, until today. So of course he had gone inside. He didn’t have anything in particular in mind, but he liked browsing through old stuff for anything unusual or funny. His pace meandered until he came upon some books, where he squinted at the faded titles on the spines. He hadn’t been paying much attention and jumped when the woman spoke, his heartbeat spiking. It was ridiculous how easily he startled lately and he huffed a laugh as he looked over at her. She looked kind of familiar, but he didn’t think they had spoken before. “No, I’m not. What gave it away? Do I have the baffled look of a tourist?”
"Not entirely baffled," Greer said with a smile. "You just have that newbie vibe about you. I recognize it because I had it myself. Probably still have it." It was mostly intuition, but that was a bit harder to explain. "Where have you come in from?" He looked like a city boy to her, but Greer had been wrong about those particulars before. And she was generally curious about people, and while she had no issue about taking Rost's hand when they first met, she occasionally felt like she needed to practice good manners and ask a few questions before she started trying to read their palms.
“Chicago,” Noah said, smiling back, sincere but tireder than usual. Still, he liked talking to people, even if it didn’t always go great, but the woman seemed friendly. “My friend and I have been here for a--couple--three--weeks now?” Time was running together somewhat and while it wasn’t complex mental math, it was beyond him at the moment. “We’re staying at the B&B. How long have you been in town? You might have a better handle on the vibe thing than me.” Or at least, she seemed to be more observant, since he might not have pegged her as from out of town if she hadn’t implied she was more recently arrived as well.
"We got here near the end of September from California," Greer said, marveling a little that she and Dev had been there for over a month and none of them suffered from wanderlust yet. It felt like they had reasons to stay. Several of them. "We were at the Juniper Inn for awhile but decided to rent a place once we thought it would be nice to stay a bit longer. There's certainly a vibe about the people here, and after awhile, you can sort of separate the locals from the newbies. Are you here visiting family? Or seeking out the dark undercurrent of secrets this town holds?" She grinned as she spoke, as not to sound too hokey, even if her curiosity was sincere.
That clicked together in Noah’s mind, though it could have been coincidence, he supposed. “Oh, are you with Dev? I ran into him once and he mentioned he was looking up places to rent,” he said as explanation. He grinned at her in return. “More the dark undercurrent, you could say. We’re checking out some of the rumors we’ve heard about this place, and trying to see if we can find anything about a missing friend.” Most of what they had found about the former were bizarre, yet still inconclusive, and the latter… Magnus hadn’t mentioned anything in a while and Danny’s cousin had been found dead recently, so it wasn’t going altogether successfully. “Have you found out much about the secrets of the town? Is that what enticed you to stay?”
Greer's eyes lit up at the mention of Dev and in her mind it felt like kismet that she would meet someone who has already met her boyfriend. She wondered what Dev thought of this man. "I am with Dev, yes," Greer said. "I wouldn't say we've discovered much. This place has an energy about it that has kept us here. I suppose we're curious, but it's a bit of a morbid fascination. I'm sorry to hear about your friend," Greer added. Have they been missing very long?"
Meeting Dev had been a somewhat passing occurrence, but he had seemed cool, even if he’d given off the vibe like he might actually believe in some of the more supernatural rumors afloat about Point Pleasant. And that maybe his lady did, too. “It’s definitely got an atmosphere about it,” he said, which. Disappearances and murder could make any place creepy, he supposed. “And thanks. He went missing a few weeks ago now. We really haven’t been able to turn up too much and the odds are probably pretty bad at his point, but…” he trailed off with a shrug, since he’d stay as long as Magnus wanted him to. Plus they still needed to put something together for their channel. “I’m Noah, by the way.” He offered his hand to shake with his belated introduction. “Is there anything in particular that’s got you morbidly fascinated about this place?”
"Odds are never stacked in the favor of the missing, but there is always hope for a resolution," Greer said. She smiled at Noah's introduction and she took his hand, almost immediately turning it palm up toward her. "It's nice to meet you, Noah. Do you mind?" Greer spread her thumb along his palm to open it up to her. "You have a straight heart line, right here, do you see." She ran her forefinger along it. "It's rather long too, which tells me you're a rational thinking. One who likes to analyze." Greer grinned, lifting her gaze to his face. "You must have difficulty doing so in a town like this one."
“That is what I gathered from, well, everywhere,” Noah said. He wasn’t really optimistic that this was going to be the exception to the occasion and he didn’t believe that Magnus did either, but Noah also never really wanted to be openly discouraging. Blinking with incomprehension at the request, he went with it as the woman examined his hand but didn’t tell him her name. “Uh, sure, this is fine.” The rest of her words made somewhat more sense, and his lips quirked in amusement, following what she pointed, then meeting her gaze. “It’s been alright so far.” That was somewhat of a lie, but he didn’t think she necessarily needed to know that. “The heart line isn’t telling you about my many failed marriages or future kids?” His tone was somewhat teasing, but more good-naturedly than anything.
Greer generally realized on some level that there were plenty of people who didn't appreciate her impromptu palm readings, but she found them to be important and her curiosity tended to take precedence over their comfort. She grinned up at him, still pressing her finger against his palm gently. "Oh no. Your heart line tells me about your emotional state, that is to say you're not an overly emotional person. That's not necessarily a' bad thing. Being stubborn may help you in plenty of situations, but... you've got to be able to open your mind to things that can't be easily explained away." She stared at his hand for a moment longer, her lips twitching again. "That being said, you're also a very passionate lover, when you get the chance."
As far as unexpected stranger touching went, the palm reading wasn’t too bad. Not that Noah held any less disbelief in any possible psychic abilities that this lady might have versus anyone else in Point Pleasant, no matter what weird things kept happening in the time. Some of it was undeniably bizarre, but as that kind of thing went, he was more inclined to hold tighter to logic--there just wasn’t really an alternative that he wanted to admit to. His lips quirked as she grinned at him, and he couldn’t quite stop a laugh. “I try to be more on the chill side, helps balance out my partner.” Which was mostly true, though Noah could definitely get uppity about certain things when he got going. “I get passionate about a few things. Being a lover among them. Do you do this a lot?” he asked, gesturing with his free hand at the one Greer was looking at.
"Mmm." Greer grazed the pad of her thumb over his hand again, feeling as though maybe his rationality would be put to the test the longer he stayed here. Perhaps not in a pleasant way either, but she knew well enough to leave that alone for the time being. Greer squeezed his hand gently before releasing it. "I do it when the mood strikes. Nobody really thinks about the life experiences they carry around on their person." She lifted her own palms up for him to see, though there wasn't anything special there. Just bracelets dangling from her wrists and rings on her fingers. "You and your partner will be here awhile. You won't leave the same as you were when you arrived." Greer lowered her hands and offered another small, but friendly smile. "Stay safe, especially as the cold front comes in."
Noah smiled faintly at the squeeze to his hand. “Sometimes I feel like things have settled in on me, but I guess my hands aren’t the first thing that comes to mind.” Then at the other words, he wondered if that’s what she would say to any tourist who happened to be coming through as winter approached. To some extent, Magnus and Noah had already been in Point Pleasant longer than he had anticipated, which had more to do with the weird events that kept happening in town rather than any real hope of finding Magnus’ missing friend, at this point, at least in Noah’s opinion. “We’ll at least be older and with a few more stories to YouTube home about,” he couldn’t help saying, somewhat jokingly, since there was a pit of unease in his stomach that he was very pointedly ignoring. “We at least remembered to bring our heavy coats. Do you feel ready for the winter?”
Greer laughed a little. She had never been one for technology, but she was still fascinated by how people communicated these days. Youtube-ing stories home. She would have to find a computer or pull it up on her phone to see if she could find some of his videos. "Oh... not really," she said with another laugh. "We came here from California, so this will be new to us. But I'm not put off too much by the cold. It's been a long time since I've seen snow, so I'm looking forward to it more than anything. We... may have to go buy some heavier coats, if what I've heard about Maine winters is true. But I think the cold will be the least of our worries."
There had been enough odd about the town that Noah and Magnus had, in this case, too much to work with and while they had started some half-formed things, they had made less headway than they might have, otherwise. Plus, the lack of sleep that they both seemed to get at the B&B didn’t really help matters either. “Chicago’s not quite as cold as here, but definitely a closer comparison than California.” Though winter wasn’t his favorite, Noah didn’t usually mind it too much, he just couldn’t seem to get warm at times, even under a bunch of layers. He didn’t think too much about it. “If not the cold, what do you think the most of your worries might be?” he couldn’t help asking out curiosity.
That was a question that could be difficult to answer, though Greer didn't really worry about whether or not he would believe her, or find her odd. "The unexplained," she said simply. "I think there's a lot going on in this town that you can't see, or won't, depending on your level of belief." Greer smiled. "I think if you've been researching this place, you know the weather is treacherous, but probably the least of anyone's worries." He was a skeptic, and that could only make matters worse.
Was this leg pulling, or genuine? The palm reading indicated it might be the latter, or maybe it was all part of the woman’s shtick, but she hadn’t tried to charge anything, so Noah wasn’t sure what she might be getting at. “Ah, yes. Our research has turned up a rumor or twenty about what goes on here.” What there was to substantiate it was questionable, but. That was for another day. “I’ll try to keep an eye out on what might go on.” He gave her a lopsided grin. “For now, I think I’m gonna try to poke around what else this place has to offer, since I can’t figure out what schedule it’s on, but I’m sure I’ll see you around.”
Some rumors were simply that - rumors. But in Greer's experience, there was always a smidgen of truth in there somewhere. It didn't always lead to the strange and supernatural, but she had a feeling in Point Pleasant, the fantastical stories held more truth than any other town she had visited. She just hoped Noah and his friend were careful. The skeptics weren't always on guard as they should be in a place like this. "I'm sure you will. It's a small town." Greer smiled at him and patted his arm before turning to leave. "Take care, Noah.'