[September]

[intheruins]

Even after having moved her belongings from her apartment in the city out into the countryside, Serena's house remains barren and desperately in need of decoration once having realized she had no furniture to her name. She hadn't minded too much what their house looked like in North Carolina – though of course, it was beautiful – but her priorities had been different then and she'd barely spent any time inside at all. Here, she has her son to think of, and she wants the place George is raised in to be warm.

So she's made an arrangement to go shopping with Edith, one of the few people in all of Darrow who might understand her sense of style – and why modern decor has her so at a loss. They decide on Törgt which is a store that she's never heard of – a fact that doesn't surprise her in the least. It's relatively inexpensive, though, and that's a selling point now that she's hardly wealthy.

George is sleeping in his pram as they wait by the entrance of the store for Edith, Serena turning through the pages of a catalogue and trying her best not to judge until she sees anything in person. Still, she can't help but think about what a waste of wood to lacquer it in such outrageous colors. There are scattered options that look like they might match what she has in the house already, but none of it has any soul to it and she can't help but gently sigh.

Comments

[ghostsarereal]

Edith has never been to Törgt before. In fact, the very concept of it seems fantastically strange to her. Still, she's heard good things, and though she rarely uses her computer for anything more than writing, she'd managed to do a quick search for it, and it seemed like a promising place to find sturdy yet inexpensive furniture — a good option, then, for what Serena needs. With that being the case, she thinks it might well prove to be fun, anyway, or at least something like it. Better than one of the two of them tackling it alone, still so hopelessly out of their own times. There's an easy kinship to be found in that, something that she's noticed has been a foundation of a good number of her friendships here.

Spotting Serena and George by the entrance of the — admittedly rather daunting in size — store, she smiles as she approaches. "I haven't kept you waiting too long, have I?" she asks, then nods towards the magazine. "Any leads yet?"

[intheruins]

"Not at all," Serena says, shaking her head. She's barely just arrived, only turned a few random pages while waiting for her new friend. She doesn't mind the time to herself, anyway, as much as she's learning to embrace life without Pemberton she's still growing accustomed to all of these people. Just standing in the entrance of a store like this is almost overwhelming. "And not really. I keep expecting to see something like what we had back home but it seems impossible."

[ghostsarereal]

"It really does," Edith agrees, brow raising slightly as she nods. "Some of the simpler things aren't terrible, but... It's all changed so much more than I would ever have imagined." It's one thing, after all, to live out a progression of time, to watch change happen gradually. It's another to be more than one hundred years in her future, to be in a time she ought never have lived to see. "Shall we go in and take a look?"

[intheruins]

"It can't hurt to try," Serena answers, making sure that she smiles as she does. She doesn't want to be negative about the whole experience before it's even begun though she does tend towards cynicism. This is her life, for better or worse, and at least she's in good company as she lives it. Pushing the pram towards the entrance to the display floor, she turns so she can face Edith as they walk. "Are you looking for anything?"

[ghostsarereal]

"Nothing in particular," Edith says, shaking her head. "My apartment is furnished, and I suppose I don't need any more than that. If I can find something nicer, though... Well, it might be worth making the most of." More important, she thinks, is that neither of them will be approaching this alone for the moment. It's all a little easier to try to process in the company of someone else for whom this isn't exactly normal. "How about you? What's essential?"

[intheruins]

"We'll have to see," Serena says. She can imagine the store's inventory appealing to the majority of Darrow but the majority of Darrow aren't from elsewhere and elsewhen. Serena's visited a small number of thrift stores for the basic furniture for her home with her son so they can at least sleep comfortably, but for secondhand it had been so expensive. It's not a trend she can keep up. "We had to leave the apartment furniture behind. I managed to scrape together enough for a bed and already had a bassinet, but we could use a table and seating and some decorations – if any of them suit the place. I wouldn't mind finding some toys for when George is a little bigger, too."

[ghostsarereal]

"They ought to have something on that front," Edith says, though she's well aware she's speaking from a place of no knowledgeability whatsoever. Everything she does know about Törgt, she's learned from other people and general collective consciousness, its reputation having told her a good deal without her ever having set foot in the store. Still, from what she is aware of, it seems likely enough, falling in line with some of what they're known for having. "I don't know what their decorations are like, though. Half the time, I can't tell what people here like in general. It all seems so... random." At least anything they come across is bound to be more tasteful than the clothes that have grown popular in the time she's missed. There are plenty of ways in which she's learned to acclimate, but there are some things she'll never get used to, too.

[intheruins]

"Like they don't even care what they're putting on their walls," Serena muses, making no effort to keep her voice low as people walk past the three of them. She's never been one to quieten her opinions and she's found, ever since she's arrived, that so many people in Darrow don't seem to care about much. Grateful as she is for all it's given to her she's conscious of how she'd done nothing to earned it. Back home, she'd fought so hard. "I suppose that's their right. I think we follow these arrows," she says, though she's mostly just following the crowd. "We definitely didn't have any stores like these in North Carolina. I think it even has a restaurant."

[ghostsarereal]

"We didn't, either," Edith says, shaking her head. "Not back in Buffalo, and certainly not once I'd moved to England." She'd been virtually in the middle of nowhere there, and while she knows that was more of a lucky convenience for the Sharpes rather than something deliberate, it had only made being there all the more unsettling. There was nowhere to go, no exit she could take. "Do you think the food is any good? It's hard to imagine buying a meal in a furniture store." It does seem rather convenient, at least, in the way that so many things about this time do, all designed to minimize the time spent on them. Its quality, though, may be a different matter entirely.

[intheruins]

"It's hard to imagine buying furniture in a restaurant, too," Serena muses. "But I'm confident that whatever they're serving up can't possibly be as bad as what this city seems to."

She's dealt with danger before, untrained horses and men with wandering hands and knives pointed her way, but at least she'd known what to do with those. In Darrow, it isn't so.

[ghostsarereal]

"Very little could be," Edith says, though as she does so, she's aware that it isn't entirely true. Inexplicable as some of the horrors she's seen in Darrow might be, none have yet to come close to what happened after her marriage to Thomas, how very nearly she'd come to being killed for it. In a strange way, though, there's something heartening about that. If she could survive that, then she thinks she can handle anything this place might have to throw at her. "So it has that going for it regardless."