finchwoodacademy | (no subject)

Who: Shiloh and Pearl!
When: Last month sometime, shortly after Squeleven's exploration
What: Shiloh does a palm reading; Pearl's still BAD luck
Where: Cups Common Room
Warnings: None!

Shiloh doesn’t normally offer to do palm readings for free to anyone who isn’t a close friend, but
Pearl is nice and he feels sort of bad that she maybe actually believes that she attracts bad luck. So, he’s following through on his promise and is heading over to the Cups common room after a bit of coordination with the senior, hoping to assuage some of her fears (?) about what the universe has in store for her. Shoved in his pocket are a few luck trinkets from around the world - a tiny evil eye bead on a safety pin, a pressed four leaf clover, a small golden pig - that he plans on giving her if things are looking especially dire. He figures they’ll help, if at the very least because of the placebo effect; he’s got a surprisingly limited amount of opinions on the reality of the occult things that he practices, so he’s not positive they’ll work to counteract anything that might be going on with her… but that’s doesn’t really matter, right?

As the sophomore arrives he peeks curiously into the room, wondering if anyone else will be around. Maybe he can get them to give him a few bucks for their own reading.

Pearl’s curled up quietly when Shiloh comes into the room. She hasn’t really told any of her more dear friends about this little rendezvous with destiny and a sophomore. It’s stupid, probably, and some of them will tell her that. The rest will just comfort her, and right now, she doesn’t want to be comforted. She wants the strange guilt that’s been pulsing at the back of her mind since Saturday to be resolved, one way or the other. She knows it probably wasn’t HER personal fault that Atticus got tired. And that the rift moved. But she’d thought of those problems specifically...so what if it had been?

It doesn’t seem wise to rule anything out. So she springs up from the couch she’d been reserving, long limbs coursing forward toward Shiloh. She’s waving brightly, like he’s her best friend, and not the maaaybe harbinger of doom. “Hey!” Pearl sing-songs, and beckons him into the common room. “Come sit down! Do you need anything?? How do we DO this??”

She’s never been palm-read before, and this is almost certainly not good etiquette.

At his core, Shiloh is somewhat shy, and so someone he doesn’t know that well enthusiastically greeting him has him looking like a deer in headlights for a few moments. Pearl is so friendly! Pearl has so much energy! It’s momentarily overwhelming, but her question of how they go about palm reading snaps him into his performance state. He’s a psychic, a palm reader, and he knows how to tell people sort of the truth, and sort of what they want to hear!!! Slipping fully into the common room, he smiles at the older girl, recovered from his momentary shock.

“Ummm,” Ok, maybe he’s not fully recovered. “Here! Let’s both sit. We can have tea after, maybe? But let’s get riiiight to the reading.” He mimics her singsong a little, because mirroring tends to put people at ease; someone that thinks they’ve got bad luck probably needs a bit more ease in their life. “And I’ll need your right hand.”

“Oh definitely stay for tea. I have so much.” This is a lie. She needs to stock up. But there’s enough variety that she can entertain one guest for the day. Pearl slips next to him on the couch she’d just vacated, propping a throw pillow so it’s not in the way. “You’re so sweet for coming down.” She rolls up the cardigan she’s wearing, and lays out one long hand across her lap, palm up, wondering vaguely if she should’ve fixed the chipped black nail polish she’s still wearing. (Did THAT affect the fates.) “All right.” She exhales, grinning warmly to hide her nerves, “What does FATE say.”

“I like tea! And this is, like, my job,” Shiloh chirps in response before he shifts back into Serious Psychic Mode; his expression is confident and focused as he settles himself in and takes her hand in his. He turns it over, examining her nail polish, her knuckles, lifting it up momentarily to check its overall shape. Some of this is show, but some is true examination… but hopefully she believes it’s all the latter. Otherwise he needs to watch his mother more closely when he gets home.

After a bit more somewhat showy nonsense, Shiloh settles back on actually looking at Pearl’s palm, finger lightly tracing a line, and then another. He clicks his tongue.

“Well,” he finally says. “It’s not all bad news. There’s a lot of good here!”

That’s. Not exactly what she wanted to hear. Her eyes go even bigger and wider than they already had been. A lot of good implied some wasn’t. Maybe a lot wasn’t. She blinks at her palm, too, trying to see what he’s seeing.

“What do you see.”
She stage whispers, steeling herself for her prognosis.

“Mmm,” the sophomore starts, because a bit of tension is good, especially in readings. He looks over her palm again though he already knows what he’s going to say, trying to add legitimacy to what he’s telling her even though she seems to already believe him. “Well, your life line is pretty strong, and your head line suggests you have lots of potential.” Here Shiloh pauses, shakes his head, and meets Pearl’s gaze.

“But I see a bit of difficulty in love. And other things.” Again, he mirrors the girl, stage whispering his final statement.

That’s very vague and ominous, and Pearl blinks once more, honestly unsure what to think. She doesn’t put much stock in the occult or otherworldly. Or at least, she didn’t. When it’s all real and in front of her, it’s hard for Pearl to be skeptical, and she’s eating all of this up. She winces a little at the love prediction. That’s nothing she didn’t know.

“What...other things?”

That’s much scarier.

Ohhh, he feels a little bad at the wince - Shiloh doesn’t know a ton about Pearl’s love life, but he had imagined it’d be at least sort of a sore spot, hence his pointing it out. And, well, it maybe is a bit. Still, this doesn’t occupy his thoughts for long, though, because he’s got a job to do. There’s no time for guilt in palm reading.

“These little lines, right here? They suggest constant disappointments, things that’l drag you down because they just keep happening.” It’s a bad prognosis, but, despite all the readings he does and all suggestions he makes that fate is definitely a thing… he doesn’t believe in it. At least, he doesn’t believe that it entirely controls your life, which means the next thing he says is entirely genuine.

“But it doesn’t have to be like that.”

Her eyebrows knit into each other. Shiloh couldn’t possibly guess how true his prediction is. She’s tempted to pull her hand away. Maybe that’s enough palmistry for one day. She doesn’t really want to know more. It’s all the same. She’s disappointed, she’s the disappointment. It’s predictable, and she doesn’t care. Pearl is bad at forcing her facial expressions into things she isn’t feeling, but she tries for calm and kind. “Oh.” She chances, hopeful. “Are there ALTERNATE lines?”

Shiloh watches Pearl very closely as she takes in this news, and as someone who prides himself in reading others, what he’s picking up is… not great. He reminds himself this isn’t just a job - this is a classmate, someone who’s practically his age, and someone who probably wants the truth, but also more hope than some lines on her hand might suggest she should have. It makes him slip out of his act even more.

“I mean, there are, yeah.” After a moment, he releases her hand, digging in his pocket and producing the three charms he’d brought. “And like, honestly? I don’t think fate is like, fate. So you can overcome some bad hand lines.”

As soon as Pearl’s hand is freed, she shoves it into her cardigan pocket, balling up her fist, hiding the evidence. Her smile shoots straight back into place, though it’s still tell-tale worried. She feels a little silly being scared about any of it at all. He’d been speaking in generalities, anyway. There’s nothing to be scared of.

“You’re so good at this.” She says, instead of continuing a discussion about fate. THAT’S certainly nothing she wants to think about right now. “What are those supposed to do?”

Unable to help himself, Shiloh fidgets a little bit. He feels bad that he told Pearl any of this - he shouldn’t be stressing her out. A bad fate prognosis is not fun in general, but especially when they’ve got all sorts of weird stuff hanging over them it seems a little unnecessary. He pulls in a breath, forcing himself to return her smile convincingly as urges her to take the three items in his hand.

“Protection and luck. Just keep them on you, and it’ll help. Scientifically proven.” It’s definitely not scientifically proven.

“Um. But like. Really, you’re going to be ok. I can feel it. You might just have to fight through some stuff?”

Optimism never sit very far away from Pearl, and a grateful smile blooms over her face easily enough. She plucks the charms out of his hand, and examines them. These probably...aren’t scientifically proven, so much. But they’re appreciated. “I’ll keep them with me. FOREVER.”

She vows, and tucks them into her pocket. She doesn’t want to think about fate or anything like that anymore, and brushes it all out of her head in favor of fussing over details. It’s easier. “Hey, do I owe you anything? Don’t you want tea?”

Shiloh watches Pearl perk up, feeling a little relieved that the trinkets have maybe (?) helped her mood. He doesn’t want her to feel bad, especially because of him. He smiles, a little forced though it doesn’t come off that way. “This one’s on me. But, um, I’ll definitely take some tea.”