Rajani’s Home Above the Desert (Character Entry)

Profile: Here

With the entirety of the ground level devoted to the lamp shop, living space is limited to the second floor. Even so, a large portion of that space is allotted to Rajani, with both the main living area and what was once one of the modest bedchambers converted into a large single room divided by a waist-level half wall. His father, meanwhile, claims the other small bedroom at the opposite end of the hallway.

Rajani’s room is colorful and inviting, with bright, intricate fabrics draped across the walls and many colorful lanterns suspended from the corners of the ceiling. Their soft glow illuminates the assortment of stained glass that rests against the high narrow windows — and when the sun shines, it casts rainbows onto the floor. Several fluffy pillows lay scattered on the floor, encircling a low table with several half-burned candles and an intricately carved incense burner gathered at its center.

Against the half-wall divider, a number of wooden crates sit stacked upon each other to create shelves, which hold a number of interesting items. These include books, small painted figures, interesting stones, small bowls full of beads and baubles, and a number of mementos from places Rajani has never been, personally, but which have been gifted to him by a number of customers and business associates.

Above the divider hangs a colorful curtain made of stringed together beads — an attempt at privacy, since neither the sitting area nor the entrance to the sleeping area have doors in place to separate them from the rest of the house. This is not uncommon in the region Rajani calls home.

Stepping into the bedroom proper means stepping onto the plush, intricately woven rug that is laid out to soften the tile floor. It is largely shades of purple, decorated along its border with geometric golden patterns. Here, too, the walls are decorated with colorful fabrics, and lanterns of many shapes and sizes hang from the ceiling. Pressed up against this side of the dividing wall, and taking up much of the floorspace with its size, is a large bed resting upon a low wooden frame. It’s covered in more pillows and blankets than most anyone could ever want, especially in this desert region.

At the foot of the bed rests a heavy wooden trunk, its top carved with intricate designs depicting the moon in its various stages. Within this trunk is where Rajani keeps the majority of his clothing, with his sandals lined up on the floor along the front of it.

Finally, there are the windows. Unlike the smaller ones in the other room, made simply to let in a bit of light rather than for providing a view outside, these ones are large, spanning from above Rajani’s head to about knee-level. There are three of them in the row, with a pair of thin golden curtains pulled aside to let the moonlight in. A single cushion rests upon the floor next to these windows — one of Rajani’s favorite places to sit and watch the desert city as it sleeps.
Crow

Kibi’s Corner (Character Entry)

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Created with SAI

Myla

Van’s House of Wonders (Character Entry)

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Created with Terraria

priz

Holly’s Home (Character Entry)

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Created with Minecraft

Morgan

priz’s Nook (Player Entry)

Created with MagicaVoxel

priz

The Forest of Thorns is not welcoming.

While other forests and woods wear soft greens in spring or glorious colours in autumn, the Forest of Thorns is always dim and grey, no matter the season. Its trees gleam in shades of deep purple or black rather than warm brown; no leaves decorate their branches, and should their sharp, bare twigs rake across your skin, you will fall victim to the forest’s poison.

The dark brambles sprouting from the ground and climbing along the tree trunks hold the same venom. Even more so than the trees, the piercing thorns seem intent on shutting out any visitors or intruders—gaps between the trees are sealed off by thorny bushes, and any paths that might once have led into the forest have been overtaken by the brambles. If, despite the thorns, you still wish to traverse the forest, you must then contend with the constant fog that shrouds it in darkness. Only the barest threads of sun or moonlight are able to shine through the grey mist, making it quite impossible to avoid the thorns that constantly threaten to tear at you. No birds sing in its branches, and no animals scurry along the forest floor. The forest is a fortress: impassable, inhospitable, and dangerous to even the most skilled or courageous individuals.

If, however, you invoke the name of its ruler, or persevere in spite of the hardship… the thorns will eventually retreat to allow you passage. Safe paths clear before you, the brambles along the ground withdraw into the bushes, and even the tree branches bend back rather than scratching at you. Tiny white flowers bloom along the thorns, and if you have suffered any wounds, the forest will gently present you with one of the buds, which soothes the pain and purifies the poison.

As you go deeper into the forest, faint pinpricks of light will start to shine through the darkness, seeming to chase away the fog. They are fireflies and fae lights; and they will lead you to the Prince of Thorns, where you may present your case before his Court. He offers asylum to those who have nowhere else to turn, but woe betide any who go to him seeking to evade punishment for their crimes. The Prince has little tolerance for those who would avoid their comeuppance, and he is not afraid to dole out his own justice.

But if you are granted leave to stay, the forest is not your enemy. It fiercely guards those under its protection, and the brambles will not turn on you unless you turn on them first. Its paths are open to you, and should you ever lose your way, you need only tell the fireflies where you need to be and they will lead you to your destination. But for those who would trespass without permission or threaten any of its residents… the forest is not afraid to lash out in kind, and the poison in its thorns has no antidote save that which the forest itself creates.

The Forest of Thorns is not welcoming, but to those it has acknowledged, it is a safe haven.

tiny kitchen…

The room is hidden from view, and inaccessible from the main corridor. It can only be reached by going through a trapdoor and down a small wooden corridor. Even then, it would still be easy to miss the room, since there is nothing distinguishing the door from the wall around it. The door is always kept locked, and only Keidan and Red have the set of keys needed to unlock it.

The room itself is windowless, as it is both secret and below street level. It is kept lit by strings of small lights, hung artfully along the crimson walls. Small candles rest in glass bowls suspended from the ceiling and on wooden shelves set directly into the wall, providing extra light. Books and bowls of potpourri also decorate the shelves, as well as various bric-a-brac important to both Red and Keidan. The room is barely big enough for the double bed it houses, covered in cream sheets. It is generally meticulously made, with the only creases being the ones in the crushed velvet fabric.

The potpourri leaves the room smelling faintly of roses, the primary flower used to make them. Due to the closed off nature of the room, it can be tricky to keep it from smelling musty, and this is mitigated partially by the potpourri, and partially by small air holes in the ceiling. These are disguised to look like part of the floor from above, simply appearing as slightly-but-not-unremarkably-so larger gaps in the floorboards. It is not a perfect solution, and there are times when there is an underlying unpleasant scent.

As there are gaps in the floorboards, the room is not soundproof. Sounds from above can be heard, albeit somewhat muffled. The floorboards above creak when walked on, but this usually only occurs when an unwitting guest walks over them; the residents of the building know where the secret rooms are and avoid stepping anywhere that might reveal the honeycomb of hidey-holes below.

As secrecy is more important than comfort, the room is too sparse and too small to really feel like home. Neither Red nor Keidan particularly mind this, however, and the room serves the purpose for which it was designed. To keep them safe.

A lover of all things aesthetic, each part of Lily’s room is distinct and very organized. Each object has its place and she checks regularly to see that all things are as they should be. The actual room is split into three main parts, though there is a shared floral aesthetic across the entire space and the color palette of the room verges toward the warmer side of things.

The first part of her room is her sleeping area. Above her fluffy light yellow bed hangs a number of fake flower garlands and some origami pieces hanging off of strings. There are stars and cranes and roses; anything that catches her fancy and is easy enough to make really. The bed is pushed against a wall where she has pinned a number of her favorite pictures, scenes of meadows, mountains and friends surround a singular picture of herself in the center.

The second part of the room is where she keeps her equipment. The lenses are neatly sorted into an order that makes sense to her and placed on pink wooden shelves. These selves have little bookends on them that Lily has glued small fake flower bouquets to. There’s yellow filing drawers full of pictures sorted by date and content and marked with little tabs, which she writes on with her fancy fountain pens.

The third part of her room is her favorite. It’s filled with the many props she uses in her photo shoots. There’s some jewelry, a lot of rings and bracelets mostly because she has a penchant for photographing hands. There’s also bundles of fairy lights for her to string up when she’s in the mood and some other glowing objects. Anything with a cord has been neatly folded and tied up so they don’t undo and tangle with each other.

And then there’s the flowers.

Some of the flowers are real. They’re kept in cute little pots, but ones she makes sure are big enough for them. She’s not afraid of moving them out if she has to, but sometimes she mistimes it. Since she’s not great about keeping the plants alive, she doesn’t really keep a lot of them around though. For the most part, she falls back onto fake flowers. There are loose piles of them sorted by color, but there’s also always a couple bouquets lying around. Never the same set of bouquets though. She often undoes them and selects new sets of flowers to put together. Its one of her favorite parts of doing shoots even if they don’t always end up in the final product.

At the end of the day, Lily had designed her own little corner of perfection for herself, and she adores making sure it stays that way.

Made with MagicaVoxel.

Reithéama the healer’s home/office.

Arrietty’s Garden has seen some rough times during a recent cave in, but she still loves her little corner of the cave. She’ll get it fixed up soon, just wait and see!

Pencil on 1990’s sketchbook unearthed from my parents’ basement last month. Apologies for the rough sketch, I’m still saving for a new stylus :D

Prof. Siberius Escott (now known as ‘Teach’, much to his everlasting dismay), is probably the most spoilt pirate kidnapping victim on the seven seas. Somewhere along the line he came to be adopted by the crew of The Reefbreaker—his supposed captors—and since that day he’s been left wanting little – except, perhaps, a little less enthusiasm in his crew’s quest to keep him comfortable. What started as a bare cabin furnished only with a hammock and basic teaching tools has somehow become one of the most opulent spaces in the entire ship, and each new raid only brings new objects to his door. Siberius was at first bemused, and then perturbed, by this turn of events, but these days he’s merely resignedly grateful, for despite everything he’s found that there’s really no where else he’d rather be. His cabin might be cramped, and it’s certainly eccentric—to say the least—but there’s no denying that it was cobbled together especially for him – and that’s very hard to ignore.

Notes
- After suffering two months of sleep deprivation and innumerable bruises (largely from falling out of the hammock every night), Siberius abruptly found his cabin equipped with a cramped but serviceable bed. He chose not to ask where it came from, but still wonders how the crew managed to get it in there.

- Siberius once grumbled at length about the cold hardness of ship ‘floors’, and after loudly correcting his terminology a few determined pirates made it their mission to put the problem to rights. One merchant ship raid and a rug stall robbery (!) later, and Siberius found himself the baffled new owner of three mis-matched deep-piled rugs.

- A bout of back issues (caused by too much time hunched over books and papers in inadequate seating) eventually led to him catching two deckhands attempting to fit an armchair through his cabin door. Siberius handled the discovery by turning right around and walking away, leaving the only spectator—the ship’s first hand; Nik—laughing her ass off behind him. He later discovered that the hands had been successful—with a little help from Nik, once she’d finished laughing—and that was the end of the back issues.

- Noting the discomfort of his primary pupil, and indeed most others who came seeking lessons, Siberius eventually dared to request a few pillows. Later, he was obliged to ask the crew to stop bringing pillows, as he’d really only needed one or two and was running out of places to put them all. He’s now beginning to run into similar problems with his books, as, being largely illiterate (but improving) and of the opinion that a teacher must have an extensive library, his crew insist on bringing him any piece of writing they can lay their hands on. This has had the benefit of providing him with several rare and valuable volumes, but those are rather the exception to the rule…

- The Reefbreaker’s crew have more recently taken to bringing him any small odds and ends they think he might like, and though he has little use for the majority of these objects, he somehow can’t bring himself to decline them. Once, it was fear and necessity that drove him to accept the crew’s gifts, but now it has more to do with sparing their feelings…and a certain unexpected warmth he experiences every time one of them offers up yet another trinket. The upshot is that his cabin’s shelves hold almost as many random odds and ends as books, making space even more limited.

Made using Room Sketcher

Ciarán is a fairly simple cat. One bed, one bath is all he needs. He does have accommodations for guests, but sharing the bathroom can get complicated. He and his grandfather originally built the cottage, but Ciarán rebuilt it on his own once he found it in disrepair.

At 6AM the kitchen tile was as cold as ice. The window above the sink had been left open and while the snow may have stayed outside, the chilly temperature had not.

The room was dark. The faint buzzing of the oven fan provided just enough noise that the creaking of each footstep seemed almost as irrelevant as during the day, unlikely to disturb any of the heroes still asleep. Between the open window and the fan, the mixture of aromas from the evening before had almost vanished, though a sensitive nose would be able to pick out the scent of burnt popcorn, cookies, and spices.

When she opened the fridge, light spilled out, illuminating stacks of takeout boxes on the island and dishes in the sink. The counter, however, was clear and spotless. All the utensils, pots, and pans were neatly packed away in the cabinets. It had taken Nadi a long time to even get such supplies since the kitchen had started with nothing but dishes when they moved in and the other heroes were not nearly as interested in baking, or even cooking, as she was (which was ironic, considering the way Theo went on about healthy diets). Now, though, the kitchen was filled to the brim. Hidden in the lower cabinets a standing mixer, scale, microplane grater, textured rolling pins, and other more unusual tools lay in neatly organized piles. Up high, the cabinets were filled not with tools but with baking. Stacks of tupperware filled with cookies, muffins, butter tarts, and other sweet treats were neatly arranged, each labeled with a tiny sticky note with the date by which they should be thrown out, sometimes including delicately written admonishments aimed at a specific person:

Nadi placed the carton of eggs and assorted vegetables she had retrieved from the fridge beside the old, wooden radio. It was a faux antique piece they had picked up from a garage sale. Tuning it and finding a place for it had been difficult, but she had eventually insisted upon placing it snugly in the corner of the kitchen counters so she could listen to it while she baked. It clashed terribly with the more modern, stylish composition of the rest of the kitchen, all in in shades of white and black, but in reality, so did they and so it didn’t seem to bother any of them.

The room, however, was still dark enough that it bothered Nadi. She moved back towards the door to turn on the light and grab one of the numerous aprons that hung on three hooks beneath the switch. There was a classic “kiss the cook” apron, one that made the wearer look like a hot nude man (though Nadi had stitched an angry emoji over his “member”, much to Robin’s amusement, of course), and one with the words “When I have this apron on I AM THE BOSS”. She chose one of the classier aprons patterned with flowers for the time being.

It was time to make breakfast.

Ness comes jogging up to her studio. The three pale grey stepping stones are wide and old, showing the wear of many paws over the years. She puts her brass key into the old lock of the oaken front door.  It engages with a quiet ‘snick’ and Ness steps across the threshold into the big open room.  The old wood creaks lovingly underfoot to greet her.  She flips on the lights, and the brightly painted walls leap to life.

Ness shakes off, and looks around her studio with pride.  The east side is glowing with the gentle sunlight beaming through the frosted glass windows.  Various coloured yoga mats are rolled up, looking like multi coloured canoli leaned against the wall in the corner.  A cluster of green, purple, and blue gym balls form an outer circle, making it look like a giant flower.

Along the west wall, with matching frosted windows, Ness glances over her dumbells.  They are neatly stacked in piles of 2lbs, 5lbs, 7lbs through 15lbers.  In a smaller stack next to the dumbells are her newer addtions, little kettleballs in asorted sizes.  Ness pushes them a little further back to clear the path to her two weight benches.  She pats a barbell to ensure it’s securely in the cradle.  ‘Safety first’ she thinks… constantly.  She smiles at the posters on the wall just beyond, illustrating how to do the various weight lifting exercises correctly.

Ness steps through the left doorway on the north wall and flips on the lights, quickly glancing over the changing rooms.  She hums as she turns around and retreats to the doorway on the right side of the north wall.  She smiles as she crosses to her tiny office.  This has all her client lists in neat little index boxes. She inhales the sweet, morning air and smiles more as she imagines the morning yoga classes and afternoon weight lifting, followed by…. Tuesday… so cycling classes this evening.  ‘Yep, this will be a great day.’ 

         
This is one of Klyna’s work spaces, specifically the garden where she grows many of the plants she uses to make her dyes. She tries to keep everything planted in such a way that she can access all of the plants relatively easily, but some areas get a bit crowded despite her best efforts. There are a couple trees that have been there since she moved into the space, namely the mushroom tree, the purple tree, and the dead tree in the corner.

Once again, since the images are kinda small! Dahlia lives in a small, traditional town. Her house is passed down through all the wish keepers, its an older house on an older property. There are a lot of cherry blossom trees on the property, as well as an old well! Inside, Dahlia’s house is a mix of the traditional and the modern. Most of her furniture, such as her four post bed and dresser, have also been handed down with the house. Even though the house has modern heat, there is still the old fireplace, which Dahlia likes to display her collectibles on and recline in front of while she reads magazines. She has her laptop which she can usually be seen in bed with, wacthing Netflix in her pajamas. On the walls are a few pieces of older art, also passed down with the house. There’s a tray of food next to the TV since that’s where she usually eats. And a coffee cup on the floor because she’s kind of a slob.

It’s a storage facility converted into a room, where they live with Deion.
Pencil on paper.

She was never one to bedazzle the world with decoartions.

Let the rest of the world clutter their rooms: Hawkwing’s was simple. Never got a proper bed, for all she’d been here over a year now, the bedroll was lightweight and easy enough to roll up if - when - she would eventually need to leave. It lay in the farthest corner of the room, no one would be able to sneak up on her with her perfect view of the window on the opposing wall, next to the door. There was another secret trapdoor underneath her bedroll, but that was well bolted and protected: unreachable from the outside. No, that trapdoor was for escape only.

Across from the bedroll lay a locked chest, magical runes lightly inscribed were barely visible, unless of course the uninvited tried their hands at opening it. Then the runes would flare up, any anyone unfortunate enough to be its victim met with a nasty surprise. It was filled with what little treasures Hawk had.

Except for her weapons of course. Those and her armor were always by the bedroll when not on her body, precisely arranged along with a small pack of essentials should she need to up in the night for a battle or escape.

Finally, a rolled up piece of parchment, right by her bed. This too would be reachable, the one thing she would stop to grab no matter what, now jealously kept rolled up and tired by a single red string.

All in all, a simple room, complete with its wooden flooring and straw-thatched walls. Leaky roof tiles concealed even more hidden arcane runes, these for caution and warning. It was a simple enough home, but home enough for Hawk. And so here she stayed.

Reya’s sweet sweet home
Reya’s profile
Created with Animal Crossing Happy Home Designer

Being on-the-move entertainers, Alice’s and her parents live in tents. She finally got her own when she turned six. Now she can doodle all over the canvas walls and customize her own space. Her parents maintain that the outside must remain plain, with the exception of a flower stitched here and there to interrupt the boring taupe color. Still, she’s made remarkable use of the space inside.
When the ‘door’ is pulled back, one is instantly greeted by the sight of shimmering blue doodle of a puppy that bounces and wags its tail in excitement at a guest. Peeking inside one will enter a magic world of various doodles which dance and swirl around the top of the tent. Flowers and various geometric shapes form their own sort of starry sky to stare up at night.
On the right side of the tent, a merry tea party of ineki meets, though its occupants often abandon the table and treats set before them to hop and play across the canvas interior. Alice tends to play with them often. Though, perhaps not as much as the small frog who is currently absent from his pond drawn into the left side of the tent. Currently the frog himself must be off on an adventure with Alice in the nearby field of flowers. (He often leaves his canvas perch to accompany Alice.)
The floor of the tent is simple grass, with a pink bed roll laid out on it. A soft yellow and blue chest waits in the corner containing her few essentials and treasures, such as a tooth brush, comb, paper, and crayons. But it’s what’s hiding behind the chest is actually precious. Tucked away in the very corner is a small drawing of a dog house with a silently crying self-portrait who comes out at night to share the lonely nights with Alice after all the others have gone to sleep.

The best place in the whole Cave is my cozy warm corner where the butterflies live. 

If I hold very still, the butterflies come to rest on my fur, fanning their wings.  I love all of them, all the brilliant colors, although the bright orange are my very favorite.

It takes a lot of hard work to keep the flowers growing all year round.  Digging, planting, harvesting the seeds, adjusting the magic to the Cave’s changes, talking my friends into helping out…all of it is worthwhile when I can lie here in my garden, breathing the sweet lavender and the damp soil, and watch the butterflies appreciate every bloom.

Some of the butterflies come to visit our flowers once in a year, then dart away, out past the Bone Monster.  Butterflies have busy schedules, you know. 

Others stay all year long, here in the magic that keeps winter away from them, happy to lay their eggs on our specially raised plants and survive another generation.  If they have a place to go home, I don’t think they remember where it was. I like to think they’re just lost, that their distant cousins found places to live and thrive once the spring came back.  We can’t go that far, though, and no one’s brought a book to us yet. 

A garden has to have spaces for Mycenians as well as butterflies.  I keep grassy patches so I won’t crush the flowers while I’m tending them. It’s the perfect place to curl up on the soft grass and purr until it’s time for another day of work. 

_{- made with Paint Tool Sai}

Being a dodokeeper had become a life’s work for Ander. An obsession. He loved his birds almost as much as he loved his brother. They were his world. Where they lived was where he worked, and he put as much care and attention into their coops and pens as he did his own house. More, perhaps, given the persnickety nature of some of the more spoiled featherfloofs. The enormous cavern they called home contained barns, the house, and a multitude of pens, gardens, and storage sheds. Ander was very proud of it. He and his twin had really built up the place, though admittedly in a bit of a haphazard manner.

When he had a bit of time during the day, which was rare enough, he often retreated to a secluded spot to sit and watch the dodos. In the corner of one of the larger barns, tucked behind a stack of hay bales and empty wooden crates, were some of the older, unused pens where elderly dodos sometimes gathered to snooze and gossip. Their quiet squawky chatter was a relief, compared to the loud vibrance of the younger ones out on the yard.

There, away from the crowd, Ander could relax for a few moments with whichever wandering birds might have followed him. The area was dim, the only light coming from the wide windows beyond the stacks of crates. He didn’t dare bring a lantern with the amount of hay all over. He wasn’t entirely sure what the crates had originally contained. There were neither labels not contents left. Possibly, dodo feed or farm equipment had been delivered long ago. Nor did he know why they were still taking up space in that barn, but there were too many to move easily, and the dodos seemed to like sitting on them. And if they made the dodos happy, Ander was alright with just leaving them there.

He’d often find huddles of fluffy dodos snoozing away among the bales of hay or inside the closed pens. How they managed to get in there on their own, he had no idea, but he’d taken to keeping the two troughs and feed bins stocked just in case. The elder dodos were, Ander often thought, fluffier than the youngsters, though he didn’t know why. It wasn’t as if dodos were sleek birds to begin with, but these ancient creatures were like walking dandelion puffs. He worried sometimes that they fluffed up because it was cold or that they were feeling unwell, but the cozy corner was always fairly warm, the air still and quiet save the soft sounds of sleepy dodo-talk.

The creaky floorboards were covered in a thick layer of hay, ideal for lounging in. Ander sometimes took advantage of it to nap inside one of the empty wooden pens. Inevitably, he’d find himself covered in downy feathers and dodos. Despite the pen doors always being securely closed, he’d wake to find he’d become a pillow. He vaguely suspected, though he never in all the time he’d been a dodokeeper, actually seen it - deep down… Ander thought that the dodos could fly.

Perhaps not well, but how else could he explain them entering a closed pen so often?

Unless of course, they had learned to unlatch the gate. But then they would have had to close it again. He could, perhaps, have locked himself alone in there to nap, as some sort of experiment. But he never remembered, so the sneaky dodo antics remained a mystery.

He kept the area clean and ready for the birds, with fresh hay on the ground and cool water daily in the stone troughs, even though the only use for it currently was as a nap spot and a hideaway for the elders. They had their own pens, but he’d learned it was futile trying to herd them or keep them in. They always escaped when he wasn’t looking. Given that they were magical birds, he didn’t rule out some sort of wizardry at work.

The high ceiling above was usually in shadow, but he could still make out more cobwebs than he was comfortable with. They hung from the thick beams overhead, occasionally tugged by an unseen breeze. The barn itself wasn’t particularly drafty, but there were small vents higher up in the walls. He never saw the spiders themselves. Ander hoped the dodos weren’t eating them. Without more magic than he could muster, he’d never been able to clear out the webs, so tried not to think about what else might be lurking up there. Probably, during the ‘night’, bats and other things flew in to roost. So long as they didn’t bother any of the dodos, Ander was fine with letting them sneak in.

The corner would have been ideal for curling up in the hay with a book and a dodofriend for company, but Ander never had enough time. When he found a moment between chasing birds and caring for birds, he was too exhausted to do more than sprawl in the hay to watch the birds. And doze.

Even in the dead of winter, this place is warm and bright, like stepping into another world. Mist clings to the inside of the glass, and the condensation draws strange patterns over the walls. Plants of all kinds are overflowing from their pots and climbing up towards the ceiling in a thousand kinds of green. Flowers spill their scents into the air to mingle with the smell of the earth and green, growing things. Air plants and succulents hang in delicate glass containers from the ceiling. When the sun starts to set, tiny fireflies blink and wind in complex patterns around the leaves and branches.

If you didn’t know what you were looking at, it would seem abandoned. But the piles of dirt on the benches and shelves with countless plants weaving themselves into a tangled bank are a special kind of chaos. Cýron likes bringing the outdoors indoors, to the point where the greenhouse might be a better science experiment than garden.

Despite the smell of green growth, there’s something else running through the air—something damp and old, something rotting. Then you spot the animal skulls hidden among the plants, leaves and flowers bursting from the eye sockets, curling around the stained bone.

“Don’t worry,” Cýron says. “They were just for fertilizer.”

The warmth of the greenhouse weighs down on you like a wool blanket.

“Anyway, thank you so much for visiting! I hope you enjoy your stay here.” He smiles at you, and you notice that he’s cradling a box of seedlings in his arms.

Maybe it’s time to go.