2021-12-13 - The Deed is (nearly) Done

Historically, the Black Bear Diner was more or less what a hoarder with a bear fixation would imagine a lumberjack eating in. It was, however, close to Spruce Industrial and had cheap, filling food, so it did modest business. Two years ago, however, the flagging business was purchased by Gina Castro, who was either too broke or too cheap to completely renovate the place. Instead, she kept all the bears-- and upcycled. Now all the various wooden bear statues, carved bear heads, and bear busts go through a series of wardrobe changes as they are dressed up by staff, the mugs were drunkenly repainted so some bear paws have rings, painted nails, or at the very least retouched, and the whole place polished without actually fixing up much.

The Den is open 24/7, always playing music entirely based on Gina's preference that day, and as a rule of thumb the staff never lowers it and never takes requests, though they can be bribed to change it to the genre of your choice - if they like you. And speaking of the staff, the only things Gina insists on is people get the meal they ordered in a reasonable timeframe and that it stays sanitary. Things like smiling, manners, uniforms, or really customer service are not what they're paid for, and thus are entirely optional.

Tan had sent Ravn a text, letting them know that the software is ready to roll, and suggesting they meet here. Currently, she is sitting, laptop open next to a full plate of steak and chips, with a nod to health in the form of a salad that is being ignored. Her motorbike is parked outside, and she is eating swiftly, with clear pleasure, and no sign of concern about weight or anything like that. The purple roll neck sweater is paired with jeans, and a black jacket thrown over her helmet and bag.

Motorcycle does seem to be the way folks get around this town; somebody really ought to start a club. The '63 Triumph Bonneville that Ravn arrives on is parked neatly next to the larger, younger model that he knows Tanasha to favour, and he slips his black helmet to an arm before walking inside. The black leather jacket becomes him except that one sleeve looks like he should stop wearing it while getting dragged after a horse by his feet.

He raises a gloved hand in greeting to the sucker on duty behind the country and at Tanasha before asking for 'surprise me' and then wandering down to settle at the same table. "How's it going? Managed to catch up with Addington, Benjamin?"

Tanasha pauses in the munching to greet him, a quick smile flashing across her face. "Benedict? Not yet but I will. Small world..." The mention of her friend does soften her expression slightly, warming her brown eyes. "So here..." She turns the laptop to show him, revealing a portal to his software. It is professional and slick, and it does all the things he needed, and some. "I hooked it into a grant database too, so that you can access that and use it."

"Is this where I ask what a grant database is?" Ravn grins slightly and leans in to look. "It does look like you've done pretty much everything I asked for -- and idiot proof too, which is very important in volunteer based relations."

He pauses, and then chuckles. "Sorry, I didn't mean to pry, not like that. It's more, it was literally earlier this week someone asked me if there are any boy Addingtons. I said no, to the best of my knowledge, none living. And in walks Benedict. I'm sure he's a nice guy. It's just that the names of Addington and Baxter carry a lot of weight in my work so I tend to pay attention to them."

"So basically, it has a list of every grant in it, and I put in the specs for your organisation so that it can tell you if you are eligible, and then populate your information into their grant form." She takes a bite of her food, eating quickly, and swallowing before she speaks, "This is a key, so if you want to get more than surface level, you need to put this into the USB on your computer. There are two there... combined with the passwords."

"Oh no bother, I didn't realise this was the small town he was from. Maybe somewhere in the back of my head I knew when I picked it, you never know... he was... is a good friend. During the difficult times." Another mouthful and then she adds, "What sort of weight?" Her gaze is steady as she waits, and munches.

A cup of coffee and a cheese burger with generous amounts of bacon is delivered to the Dane while he watches Tanasha go over the specifics; the Diner's owner might have enjoyed screwing with him back when he was a regular here (no, not in that meaning of the term) but the cook on duty seems to think he needs more calories. Fair's fair; Ravn is a slender guy.

Tanasha's question is valid and deserves a proper answer, though. "They're the founding families. Their family feud is more or less what fuels the tear in the Veil here. It's a very long and complicated story, and our man Benedict might not even know a whole lot about it -- or if he does, he might prefer to not talk about it. There's a lot of tragedy in there. Hyacinth used to tell me about it -- trying to find out what's going on here and maybe putting an end to some of it is kind of what I do, after all."

Tan can burn through food, and her plate is emptying fast. "Huh, a feud that can rip a hole? That is insane, you know that, right?" She pushes a fry around her plate, moping up juice with it, her forehead knotting into a frown. "What happened? I mean, I got that he was running from a lot of things but who isn't at that age?" The smile is quick, there and gone again, without touching her eyes as she finishes the last piece of her food.

She turns, glancing over at the counter, "Pie I think." Definitely pie.

If there's anyone who looks at home in a lumberjack-esque cafe, it's Ellery Briar, clad as he is in plaid and a lined jacket that looks like it would be at home on a logging trail. He shoulders open the door, burdened as he is with a large padded backpack with a tripod sticking out of a loop, and another smaller camera bag slung over one shoulder. He nearly collides with a family exiting, and he does a little do-si-do to get around them, "Sorry! Pardon me."

"It's a very touchy subject," Ravn murmurs and picks at his burger; he, unlike Tanasha, is the kind of eater who takes an age and a half to finish even a simple meal. "I pieced together a lot of it, but I was not here for the last big event to go down -- and I don't blame anyone who was for being reluctant to talk about it. The bare basics? The Baxters founded this town, the Addingtons took it over. Somewhere in there, some kind of devil's bargain. Lots of feuding, lots of complications. It seems to have culminated a few years back when a dead mass murderer possessed an Addington and killed a number of his own family off. In the light of that, you can probably see why they're not so keen on discussing it with any random, curious guy popping in with a notepad."

A fry is paused in midair, and Tanasha's eyebrows fly upwards, wrinkling her forehead, "You are kidding me. That is insane." She glances up at the kerfuffle at the entrance, her gaze flickering over the guy., and then back to Ravn. "Do you want pie?" She doesn't wait, making an assumption of his answer, and takes her empty plate back to the counter. The quick smile on her lips does reach her eyes as she speaks to the person behind the counter, "Two apple pies, with cream on the side." Everyone must like it with the cream on the side. Obviously. "Over there...."

She returns, her path crossing in front of the route Ellery may take, and drops back into her seat, "There. Pie is coming. I'll ask Ben about it."

Encumbered as he is, and distracted by the noise his phone makes as he is, Ellery nearly hits Tanasha with one of his bags when he turns abruptly. He catches himself and holds out a hand, "Ah, sorry, sorry. I'm as wide as a house on a flatbed with all this gear." He then drops the bags down on a table for four not too far from the two pie slice orderers. No way he could sit at the counter with all that equipment.

The Dane hasn't even managed to dent his cheese burger yet, and now he's getting pie. He may have to be here for a while, given the pace at which he tucks food away -- daintier than a nun with a sailor's, right, on with business. He nods a greeting to the encumbered bloke at the next table over; courtesy is free, and besides, the man feels like a furnace when he walks past, definitely one of the lucky few, the brave, the chosen, the Veil chow prospects.

"Don't know if it's worth breaching," he tells Tanasha next. "What's done is done. I suspect the family mostly just wants to move on, put it all behind them. There's not really enough of them left on either side to carry on the feud Hatfield and McCoy style -- the Baxters have scattered far and wide, the Addingtons seem to be following suit. I met a French one a couple of months back, a lawyer come back to visit her American cousins."

Tanasha glances up as the bag swings past, "Wide load there..." The words could be flirting but definitely spoken with humour, "Do you need a warning light? One of those things that go beep..." The pie may not necessarily wait for Ravn, "You just don't want me to know." The mocking protest is soft and delivered with a smile, but there might be a tiny piece of truth to it. She wraps her hands around her mug, a flicker of something akin to concentration crossing her face, and then she lifts the steaming cup to to inhale the coffee scent.

Ellery cracks a grin at Tanasha. "Yeah, maybe. I need some kinda bike lights on the side. Maybe one of those LED displays that says 'WIDE LOAD.'" He sets the bags on empty chairs so they don't take up all the table space. There's a bit of an accent to his words, but it's difficult to place it. A little rural, but somehow not distinctly from one particular place. Then, "Ooo, pie. Bet it's good here. Seems like a good pie spot. Kitsch plus food equals tasty baked goods. It's a universal rule or something." He lifts a hand to Ravn after the nod of greeting. "Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt."

"Naw, that's fine, pull up a chair. New in town?" Ravn nudges his pie plate ever so discreetly towards the empty space at the table; there is no way he is going to manage to eat an entire cheese burger, never mind pie and cream. "Ravn Abildgaard. Obviously not a native." Not with that European accent he isn't.

He glances at Tanasha and then chuckles. "Yes and no. I do think that mess is about played out, so maybe it's not a big deal to know all about it, and I do think your friend might not want to talk about it. But he's your friend, and if he does, well, good? That said, digging into local history and working out what's going on is what I do, so it'd be pretty hypocritical of me to tell others to leave well enough alone. All I can say, really, is Erin doesn't want to talk about it, Atli pretends she doesn't hear you ask, and Hyacinth gets remarkably sarcastic."

"Little flashing ones." Tanasha's grin is quick, and it goes again, "Tanasha." The introduction is light and she gives Ravn a sad look as he nudges his pie away, but shakes her head. "Pie is always such a good thing." She pulls her plate in, taking a large spoonful, and savouring it as she eats. She finishes the mouthful before she replies lightly, "I'll make him tell me..." She shrugs, slanting Ravn a grin before she adds lightly, "Also not a native." Her appreciation for the pie is obvious, with a careful balance of cream vs pie itself.

"Well, seems we're a group of outsiders. Ellery," he offers with a grin. "Pleased to meet you both." He ends up staying at his own table to keep an eye on his gear, but they're close enough that he can just scoot his chair around and be within easy conversing distance. "Do you recommend the pie? Sure looks good."

"I'm sure the pie is very good. The food here is as superb as the service is often weird." Ravn grins slightly. "I have a bit of an ongoing -- well, feud is a big word, let's call it a friendly one-upmanship, with Gina Castro."

And every other food server in this town.

Tanasha wiggles the spoon, waiting until she has swallowed before she speaks, "It is terrible, you wouldn't like it." She uses her spoon to pull the other pie dish slightly towards her. "Let me guess, you get something you never order when they are on." It seems she can put it away, her pie vanishing rapidly. "I just moved here. You? Seems odd but nice enough so far..."

"It's terrible. Gets right in your mouth," says Ellery as he tugs over a laminated menu. "Somethin' my mom always says. Usually when the server comes to ask her how her meal is. Given a few of 'em temporary heart attacks that way." He scans the menu and seems to be debating how to answer Tanasha's question. He inclines his head. "Well, apparently I moved here. Don't remember doing it, but my friend and I apparently rented out a bit of a wobbly house."

Definitely one of us. Ravn nods and picks at a piece of cheese carefully. "The missing twelve weeks, got you too. A lot of us had some pretty strange wake-up calls that way. Me, I woke up in a bed in a house on Oak Avenue -- turns out I'd bought it with a friend. We had been talking about getting a place together since we're both kind of long term bachelors anyhow. Apparently we went ahead and did. Nice enough place, though, so -- not bad. Some folks had a harder time. I guess we don't get to complain when the Veil decides to go easy on us, eh?"

Tanasha laughs, a low sound of amusement as she shakes her head, "Cruel." But amused. "I know that feeling. I moved here, and then months are a blank. I even bought a house, but I can't find all the paperwork and ..." She hesitates, glancing at Ravn, adding slowly, "There is a time where I apparently didn't send or receive emails on one account." Her forehead creases and she shakes her head slightly, dismissing it. "Things happen, right."

There's a visible bit of tension that leaves Ellery's face when the pair of them mention missing time as well. He still hasn't gotten used to the fact that most people in this town won't even blink when he talks about weirdness. "Last I remember, me'n my friend were holed up at the motel, waiting out the storm. Eatin' ramen and beef jerky. Then suddenly we've got this shitty little rental house and are apparently settled in. S'weird to not really trust your past self, isn't it? Oooh, clubhouse." The last bit is added on as he spots aforementioned menu item.

"Not going to pretend I'm not massively disturbed by it," Ravn agrees. "Not as badly as some, though. I know one bloke who found himself sitting in his underwear under twelve weeks' worth of fast food cartons and a similar amount of time of not using his shower. I know a woman who woke up very unarguably pregnant. And a woman who was in Toronto at the time, and kept getting told for twelve weeks that no, she could not make a call to or otherwise get in touch with a place that doesn't exist. Also, one guy who just -- blinked, and it was just twelve weeks later. All things considered, I don't think finding out that I just went ahead with plans I had anyway are the worst possible outcome."

"Insane. All of it." Her head shake sends curls bobbing and she pokes the pie around the plate, pausing as she takes in the list of people and how the three months hit them. "I just woke up in a house, with a few missing pieces that I still haven't found." The food enthusiasm earns Ellery a look of appreciation and agreement. "I didn't see that one, but the steak was good..." She comments lightly, before adding pie to mouth, and licking the spoon just in case any got past her. "I still feel really .... odd."

"Welp, can't say the locals didn't warn us, huh? I mean, I'm assuming you got the lecture the first time you talked to one of 'em." Ellery scratches the side of his head, then looks around for a server. Of course, one isn't to be found, so he stands up. "You two want anything? Seems I have to tackle someone to put an order in."

"I'm good," Ravn murmurs and glares at the two thirds of cheese burger that still remains. "I'm working on it. I'll get to the pie. Eventually."

Then he nods. "Everyone gets the speech, I think. I've lived here a little more than a year now, and I've certainly given it enough times. The whole Hotel California effect -- you should get right on that Greyhound and keep moving, and we all know no one ever does. Still got to tell them, right? And if we don't, I mean, imagine being alone in this place when things happen. Imagine having had no warning whatsoever."

Tan uses her spoon to point at Ravn, "He gave me the speech." She shrugs, digging into the pie, smearing the pie into the cream and then adding lightly, "I suppose at least coming here you aren't the weird one anymore." She reaches out to her mug, resting a hand around it, "I mean, doing this in the real world would get me stared at." The cup begins to steam and bubble, before she moves her hand away again, giving a shrug and taking a huge mouthful of pie.

"If nothin' else, the speech lets you know that you aren't actually crazy when you do inevitably see something weird." And Ellery snap-points at the suddenly bubbling mug. "Like that." He manages to spot a server though, and he's moving quickly to try and flag her down. Apparently he's not much more graceful without all the camera bags, because he bangs into an empty chair as he goes, and apologizes to it reflexively.

Ravn glances at the cup and chuckles. "Not going to lie, that's a handy trick. All I do is levitate spoons and swipe nuts from under cups. On an excitement scale of dramatic to Gray Harbor, I range about watching roadkill decompose while you wait for the bus. It does help to know you're not crazy, though."

He glances after Ellery, or rather, at all his camera bags. It's been a while since he toyed around with a camera himself; suddenly feeling all nostalgic. Oh well. "I grew up in a place with some of the same -- but nothing so strong or so powerful as Gray Harbor. It was a massive relief to meet others who do not think I am insane or maybe even dangerous if I tell them I sometimes see ghosts or that I can bend a spoon with my mind."

That pie is history, mopped up with the last spoonful. Tanasha eats like someone is going to take her food. "I...." Whatever she was going to say is cut off, as her phone rings loudly. She glances at it, and pulls a face. "Got to go, I'll send you the link ..." She drops a note on the table to cover her food. "Nice to meet you, Ellery...." The phone is still ringing.... ringing, and she answers it as she gathers her belongings, "Hey..."

Ellery gets back from chasing down the server just in time to see Tanasha darting off. He lifts a hand to her, then retakes his seat. "Server looked at me like I grew a second head when I went up to her to order. This town is weird, man." He got a cup of coffee while up there, and he takes to doctoring it up. "So. What is it you do? You can probably guess what I do." He motions to the bags.

"Going to venture a wild guess and say nature photographer?" Ravn puts his fork down. Half the burger is gone -- that's half a victory, right? Better to run away and come back to -- get defeated by another burger, another day. "

He curls long gloved fingers around his coffee mug instead. "I'm a tutor, for Copenhagen U. Online, obviously -- I work with people with PTSD, help them get their bachelors' or masters'. Which means I have a lot of free time in daylight hours because of the time difference. I spend a number of them volunteering at the community centre. That's how I often end up being the guy who gets to give the Hotel California speech."

"Nature? Hah, sometimes. But I'll shoot anything, pretty much. I do videography too, so I'll freelance if some news outlet doesn't have a reporter on the ground and wants some breaking news stuff. Like, I shot some b-roll of the storm rolling in." Ellery sips his coffee, thinks a moment, adds more creamer. "Also chuck stuff up on stock photo sites or other image banks. That sorta stuff. Lets me be mobile. But, and this is probably not surprising, I get more glitches in my equipment here than anywhere else."

"Heh, no. Can't say that surprises me even one bit." Ravn cracks a lopsided smile, amused. "Am guessing it works just fine if you stick a potted plant and some fruit on a table and call it a still life, but the instant you try to shoot Main Street or the Carousel, everything mysteriously breaks?"

"Not quite that bad, but definitely whatever's here resists being captured. I've caught shots of something blurry and weird, and it even shows up on the viewfinder. But when I dump the images onto my computer, it's often just...glitched right out or missing entirely. A gap in the filename, or sometimes a shot of something benign that I didn't actually take." Ellery shakes his head, sips his coffee. "It's weird, man. And I thought I liked the weird. That's why I came here to begin with."

"My fiancée used to go crazy over it." Ravn raises the coffee cup and sips its contents, clearly pleased; it's black, and it's strong, and it contains nothing but, well, coffee. "She was a sort of professional -- the kind that fancies herself a pro, but doesn't go the full mile since she doesn't need the money for rent, I'm sure you know the type. She'd take pictures around my family home, and exactly this would happen. Blurs, malfunctions, power failures, smudges, accidental memory card overwrites. Every time. In the end she banned me from her shoots because she figured I was the bad luck charm."

He grins. "Ironically, she was right. I see ghosts sometimes. So they were hanging around me -- back home, they always did. Once she went in to shoot on her own, she didn't have trouble -- because they didn't take an interest in her at all."

"Ouch, man." Ellery shakes his head. "I never had those problems before I came here. But then, I was always looking for cryptids. Now I'm thinking maybe I actually found some a few times, but they just refused to be captured on camera." He flashes a big grin as the waitress brings his plate of sandwich and fries. "Thaaank you. Looks great."

"Cryptids, like Bigfoot or the Chupacabra?" Ravn can't help a glance of interest. "It's not my field as such but -- my field is folklore, so there is some overlap. I can't tell you that either's real -- not beyond, anything is real in Gray Harbor if it wants to be. But I can certainly tell you that a lot of people believe that they are real. I've been meaning to look into some of the First Nations legends of this region as well. Have a feeling there's more in those woods than just white men's myths."

Ellery snap-points as he adds a bit of salt to his fries, then looks around sadly. "Keep forgetting Americans don't do malt vinegar. Disappointing every time." He jams a fry into ketchup, chews, nods. "Yep. I grew up in logging towns and there were all sorts of legends. That's what got me hooked. Used to go bushwacking with my buddies, searching for sasquatches and other cryptids. Actually what got me into photography to begin with."

"Mermaids," Ravn supplies with a smile. "I'm Danish -- we don't have a lot of wilderness, to put it mildly. But the one thing we supposedly have -- mermaids. People get very disappointed when a folklorist like me points out that our mermaids are a lot more harbour seal and a lot less Ariel than they'd like."

He cants his head. "We have wolves, though. They won't interest you, considering that they're just ordinary wolves wandered up from Germany. But from a folklore point of view, the outrage and the debate and the drama is amazing. We're watching urban legends from two hundred years ago getting put right into circulation, along with entirely new ones being created."

"Hey, I'd be happy with a mermaid. Or just a new species of seal or whale. That's what a lot of people don't get about cryptozoology. It's less supernatural in most cases, and more just kinda...assuming we haven't found every animal that's out there. Plus," Ellery bites into a fry, "...saying that hey, if this animal or creature is in a lot of local legends, maybe it is true. Just 'cause Europeans didn't see them or they didn't get caught on camera shouldn't be enough to discount hundreds of years of oral history."

"Oh, we saw them -- we see them all the time. It's just that our mermaids are harbour seals or ringed seals, who look a lot like someone swimming at a distance. Whether the other kind of mermaid exists -- the cryptid kind -- well." Ravn upends his coffee. "I'd tell you no, of course not. Never seen one, back home. And then you can ask me if I've seen one somewhere else, and hi, welcome to Gray Harbor. There's a bloke at the community centre who talks about nothing else but flesh eating mermaids. I used to think he was a little over the top even for this place, but I have actually seen the things he talks about. They prey on cruise boats, if there's anyone shiny like us on board. Sing to us. Which is why having a very good stereo on your boat is a good idea."

Ellery lights up at Ravn's story. "Reeeaaallly? I mean, shit, I can accept I wouldn't be able to catch the things on camera, but I'd still love to see something like that." Yes, he's excited about seeing flesh-eating mermaids that could lure him to his doom. "I have a theory that maybe some of these creatures get attracted here even if they're not from the spooky side. So they can hide in plain sight and no one'll even try to capture them on camera." A long-shot, but hey, that sort of explains cryptozoology as a whole.

"That would make a lot of sense, if you ask me. Gray Harbor's not the only place like this either -- my home is one, just on a much smaller scale. This is the old question of the chicken and the egg over again, really." Ravn grins and stands; unfolding, he is not much shorter than the other man, though considerably thinner. "Come down sometime, I'll introduce you to Denny. But brace for impact -- he'll talk a lot. I have half a mind to go out and see for myself again too, once the sailing season begins. Also because if there are really, genuinely flesh-eating sirens in the bay, maybe we need to find out what to do about it before they start abducting tourists."

He picks up his motorcycle helmet. "For now, though, I'm going to abandon my pie with you. Please, eat it. I have no idea why Tanasha thinks I can eat like a work horse just because she can."

"Oh don't worry. I've been at this game since I was a teen. I'm no stranger to long, rambling convos with the local colourful folk," Ellery grins. "Good to meet ya. And if you think I'm not gonna try'n get you to take me out siren hunting one day, then, well, today you've learned something about me." He chomps on a fry, then side-eyes the pie. "You sure?" Cause he certainly can eat like a workhorse, considering he is both tall and broad-shouldered.

"Hey, two people can sing along with the stereo louder than one," Ravn murmurs and tries very hard to not think of how his life was saved by Let's Get This Party Started.