One of the few downsides to living inside an overgrown greenhouse was the absence of space. Shiloh didn’t need much: a place to sit, a place to sleep, a place to work, but every now and again she found herself kicking over ceramic pots by accident and cursing her own taste ( or lack thereof ) in interior design.
And so, because Shiloh was quickly approaching thirty and should maybe start thinking about her nonexistent activity level, she took up hiking. With ridiculously early call times, of course, because she preferred the quiet and needed to be up before the morning commuters could crowd the streets, which left her with a serious shortage of people willing to keep her accountable for her routine.
Thankfully, she’d met Wade’s newest resident jockstrap and personal trainer by complete chance. If there was anyone willing to crawl through a long, steep nature trail at ungodly hours it was Tyler, and Shiloh was sure to take full advantage. They weren’t exactly a predictable pair, but at four in the morning she found it didn’t matter much; the two kept their conversations light and never found a reason not to get along.
“I say we take the longer path this time,” She called out when he was still several feet from the house, watching him approach from the porch with bent posture, both arms planted on the painted wood railing in front of her. “I’ve never gotten all the way through it before.”
@rozwhite
Shiloh hadn’t even made it through her junior year of high school before switching to online courses, and as a result she was rarely put into the same tense situations as most lifetime Wade residents when just trying to buy a few groceries. She was barely memorable even as an adult, and Shiloh could probably only name one particularly intimidating figure from her childhood if she tried.
Rosalyn White, who of course had to be passing the frozen aisle the same time Shiloh was adding a third carton of ice cream into her basket. Yikes. The eye contact alone was enough to make Shiloh want to put the third one back on the shelf in shame, so she did, stiffly, because she’s got no backbone and Rosalyn always had a way of making her feel dirty without even trying.
Which was honestly inexplicable, because it wasn’t as if Rosalyn ever had any kind of personal vendetta against Shiloh, and Shiloh had never been the sensitive type anyway. It was more like two magnets refusing to do anything but repel.
“Wow.”
Not the best start, but Shiloh figured she could still recover. She shut the supermarket refrigerator as if she’d absolutely intended on just getting two cartons of ice cream to begin with, doing her best to muster up a better reaction to seeing a classmate after years of not speaking. “You look way different.”
@vindvctive
From the time she was a child Shiloh’s mother had always kept a spare key hidden under the far left plant out back of the greenhouse. After she’d inherited the house Shiloh had changed nearly everything about it, the polished hardwood floors tainted overtime with soil tracks and luxury furniture cloaked in ivy vines until it was hidden from view; her father would keel over a second time if he ever witnessed what his daughter had done to the house he’d taken so much pride in. Even so, Shiloh could never bring herself to move her mother’s key.
Call it sentimentality, or whatever, but she liked to believe it might be used even just once. That maybe the home she’d spent time and energy building would serve as something to someone, and that maybe she’d have a use for the stupid spare key with no owner.
It sat and collected dust for years until a couple bought the house next door, and she met Nicoletta. Shiloh liked to think she’d come to understand the two better after some time, but even after Nicoletta started frequenting her home she still felt like there were a dozen layers that Shiloh could probably never peel back, and she was content with that.
It had become a comfortable routine; the key would be moved from under the pot, it would click and turn the lock and the two women would scratch at the surface of each other’s lives for an hour, sometimes two or three, and then the door would shut once again and the key would be placed back under the pot as if none of it had ever happened. Their relationship didn’t exist outside the manmade forest in Shiloh’s living room and it made her wonder if she were a kept secret of some kind. Again, she was somewhat content with that.
“You’re on time,” Shiloh tossed a look over her shoulder from the kitchen when she heard the back door click open at two pm exactly. She couldn’t see her visitor just yet, but she turned to puff her cigarette and talked over the bar to the corner of the hall where she knew Nicoletta would emerge eventually. “I’m making bread and it’s not turning out great, can you smell it?”
@kiaracrawfords
Shiloh pulled at the nylon strap to her cheap and abused book bag when the Crawford house came into view, yanking it over her head and resting it on a shoulder to free both of her hands while she climbed the porch steps. It was a perfectly respectable home, appropriate for the “IT” mom of Wade, Illinois, arguably middle america’s best breeder of young mothers.
She knocked just loud enough to be heard and took an immediate step back to put a little space between her and the door, gaze wandering to the flowerpots outside and then down to the soil they lived in: fresh and damp, recently tended to. She shouldn’t have doubted it, Kiara seemed like the unbelievably competent type, the kind that could juggle three children and two bake sales and do it with a smile. It would almost be intimidating if she wasn’t such a warm person, at least when it came to welcoming Shiloh into her home.
That being said, Shiloh hadn’t known the woman long, and hadn’t gotten much of a chance to know more beyond offering her daughter Arielle spotty-at-best sign language lessons for an hour or so at a time. The door swung open after a few long seconds and Shiloh looked up with a small, tight-lipped smile, hands still holding the strap across her chest.
It was their second or third lesson, but Shiloh still felt wildly out of place knocking on Kiara Crawford’s door, and to teach, no less.
“--Morning,” like always her greeting was more of an afterthought, coming only after the few stalled moments it took Shiloh to realize she should be the first person to speak. She glanced at her watch to avoid staring too much ( she’d always been told it was a creepy habit ) and noticed too late that she was nearly twenty minutes earlier than usual. “Sorry, is Arielle awake yet?”
Hope everyone is as STOKED as I am! I’ve just finished Shiloh’s dossier which includes some stats and bullet point headcanons for a quick overview, that can be found here ! I also have her full biography, which can be found here ! Lastly, I’ve made a few lil edits and whatnot which can be found in her muse tag here !
I’m going to spend some time reading everyone’s introductions and bios, so I’ll be around! I’m also keeping an eye on the discord but if I’m being honest it’s a lot easier to message me personally because I usually get Lost in the Sauce™ in big chat rooms.
Edit! Added the headcanons from her dossier under the cut for those on mobile, sorry!
Shiloh is a C.O.D.A., meaning a Child Of Deaf Adults. She herself is 100% hearing, but sign language was her first language while spoken English was her second, learned mostly through television in her early years. Neither of her parents had hearing aids and communicated solely through sign.
Her mother lives in an assisted living community that Shiloh pays for– her health has been on a slow and steady decline since her husband’s death, and Shiloh visits at least once a week because she worries about her mother’s lack of translator.
Earned a bit of a “witch-like” reputation around town. She rarely leaves home ( usually only to shop for plants and groceries ) and never says more than she has to. While it’s mostly only used as a juvenile taunt every now and again she’ll hear it said with a little more malice.
is A Helper. Shiloh gets a lot of joy from fixing things and finding solutions to problems. She gives good advice and always from a neutral standpoint.
Shiloh is more Awkward.™ than she is completely anti-social. Going along with the phrase “you can’t miss what you never had,” she doesn’t long for friendships as much as she just feels curious for them. What would it be like to go out drinking? What would it be like to talk with someone for hours at a time? She has no idea, and she doesn’t know where to start.
Dedicated plant mom of many, of course. She let the plants outgrow her mother’s greenhouse in an attempt to rid the house of her father’s presence.
Shiloh attended public school until around the 10th grade, when she decided to switch to online courses and began to excel with technology.
As mentioned, Shiloh is a web programmer but also has an interest in the mechanics of her tech. Meaning she likes to build computers and devices in her free time.
Never developed a taste in music (or much media at all), so she listens to everything and doesn’t know how to discern what she likes from what she doesn’t. Justin TimberBlake who? Is that in actor?
Prefers podcasts and audiobooks, and her favorite movies are usually silent black and white films.
Cleaning? What’s that? Despite being raised with military-like discipline, she doesn’t clean a thing unless she has to now that she owns the house. Shiloh would call it “organized chaos,“ although there really isn’t much organization to it.
