Post by NICHOLAS REID on Dec 14, 2020 15:41:14 GMT
Two weeks anywhere else in the world would’ve been nothing. A blink of an eye, nothing changing except in exceptional circumstances. In the shop it’d taken his dad four years of manually having to pry the cash drawer of the till open with a screwdriver for every sale to cave in and buy a new … vintage … one. The sign above the shop still said J. Reid and Sons, despite the fact that there’d been a daughter in the family for a whole fifteen years at this point. Progress was slow, things rarely changing with alarming speed practically everywhere he’d been … except for here Nicky thought as he drove over Wickery Bridge and into Mystic Falls. This town was deceptive, lulling people into thinking it had barely changed since the Founders had put down roots but if you knew how to take a peek below that surface, Mystic Falls turned itself into an ever changing melting pot of human and magical, shifter and blood sucker, good and evil.
He leaned forward over the wheel as he drove through the trees, squinting crystalline blue eyes at the flash of colour amongst them. Brown sheriff’s department uniforms almost lost between the winter bare pines and oaks but the blue and white crime scene tape flapped like banners. Too celebratory for whatever it was … whoever it was … they were surrounding out there. Nicky swallowed hard, letting out a long breath as he looked back to the road.
One of the things that changed here on a daily basis. The number of missing persons, the number of the dead. Whoever kept up the population on the town sign he’d passed a mile back must’ve had a full time job dealing with it. The people this town attracted had seemed hell bent on a violet see-saw ride, flipping back and forth between living peacefully and trying to run the streets of Mystic Falls bloody. It almost made him glad his own trips back here had been few and far between and late. Almost.
Maybe if he had been around a little more Bastien wouldn’t have gotten himself entangled with a Horseman of the Apocalypse. Nicky hissed out a breath between his teeth, as if business hadn’t been bad enough before it appeared the end of the times was upon them.
He glanced over at the passenger seat as he drove into the square. The wooden chest was still there, belted in to the seat to protect it on the drive from Tennessee. If there was anything he’d found on the road in the last two weeks to deal with the ancient being it was in there. Chances were it would pan out to nothing but if he’d ever been anything it had been an optimist.
Nicky nudged the car into the curb in front of Against the Thorns, peered at the place through the windscreen before he shut off the engine. It still looked painfully normal on the surface but things were always that way in Mystic Falls, until you scratched the surface at least. He unclipped both seat belts, cradled the box carefully against his chest as he climbed out. No movement behind the shop’s window yet but when he beeped the car locks shut and cross the pavement to push the pawn shop’s door open it did so freely.
Catching sight of his partner, or the being in occupation of his body, through the door into the back of the shop Nicky strolled in. He ducked behind the counter, setting the box down on the glass top of one of the cases. ”Hey,” he called out. He tipped his head back in the direction he’d approached the square from. ”Looks like they’ve found another one out in the woods. I guess things haven’t suddenly quieted down while I’ve been gone?” He raised one brow, propping his hip against the counter as he set a forearm down on top of the box. Blue eyes squinted, studying his partner. Quieted down maybe but he was willing to bet things hadn’t gone through any drastic changes this time around.
Tagged: @famine * Word Count: 687